"Jamie Dimon was in the right place at the right time and he pulled the trigger fast," notes an admirer to Bloomberg News. But it took the life lessons of another, more senior banker to help make JPMorgan’s CEO the fastest gun in town.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon is paying four times more for Bear Stearns Cos. than he planned just nine days ago -- and is still managing to get plaudits for it.

By adapting to a swiftly changing environment, Dimon salvaged a deal that had drawn fire from Bear Stearns shareholders dismayed at the initial terms brokered by the Federal Reserve to prevent the securities firm's collapse.

That all-stock deal, agreed to on March 16, had valued Bear Stearns at $2.52 a share, based on last week's closing price. Dimon and his team yesterday agreed to quadruple the price to $10 a share and negotiated to buy 39.5 percent of the company without a shareholder vote, enhancing chances that the deal will close quickly and helping New York-based JPMorgan retain Bear Stearns employees and clients.

``Jamie Dimon was in the right place at the right time and he pulled the trigger fast,'' said David Kotok, chief investment officer of Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc., which invests in exchange-traded funds and has almost $1 billion under management. ``That's the job of a CEO at a time like this.''

Dimon, 52, has led JPMorgan through the recent market turmoil relatively unscathed compared with its peers. The firm has taken $3.7 billion in writedowns on assets and loan losses, while Citigroup Inc. has had $22.4 billion and Bank of America Corp. $7.9 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

`On His Radar'

``Given the way that credit markets have deteriorated over the last six months or so, I bet an acquisition like this has been high on his radar screen,'' said William Fitzpatrick, an equity analyst at Racine, Wisconsin-based Optique Capital Management, which oversees $1.6 billion of assets, including JPMorgan shares.

The bank anticipates $6 billion in costs related to the Bear Stearns purchase. JPMorgan said in a Feb. 29 regulatory filing that it would lose $450 million in the first quarter on its home-equity loans, a number that could double to $900 million by the end of the year.

This isn't the first time Dimon has stepped into a crisis situation and leveraged JPMorgan's position. In November 2006, the bank and Citadel Investment Group LLC took over energy- trading positions from failing hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC. JPMorgan sold the trades two weeks later to Citadel for $725 million.

Dimon learned the art of deal-making from his mentor, Sanford ``Sandy'' Weill, with whom he built what is now Citigroup into the largest U.S. bank. Vikram Pandit, the company's current CEO, is planning to dispose of almost $200 billion of the lender's assets to shore up capital. Doing so may lower the bank's ranking to third place.

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