The markets opened higher on upbeat retail sales figures for the month of May driven by stimulus checks. The Dow surged more than 150 points to 12,240 while Nasdaq leaped 32 points to 2426.

On the upside

Belgian brewer InBev offered $46 billion in cash to buy Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) to create the world's largest beer company.

Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) raised its outlook for the year due to higher demand for cellphone chips.

Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL) lined up an initial payment in the amount of $413 million under its cobranded credit card deal with Chase Bank USA.

On the downside

Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) purged two key executives as investors worried about mounting losses and rumors of account closures triggering the equivalent of a bank run.

KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) cut its dividend in half and planned to raise $1.5 billion in order to cover charges from lease and residential construction portfolio losses.

Chindex International (Nasdaq: CHDX) posted higher revenues and earnings, but the China-based health care service provider missed targets.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 3 to 1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks jumped 8 points to 726.