James Dimon

Jamie Dimon’s Bank One Fund Brings JP Morgan Under SEC Microscope

By

Yeah. He’s still going to be running JPMorgan Chase when all is said and done but its got to be a headache to have to deal with another SEC investigation. This time it’s JPMorgan’s relationship with the Bysis group that’s caught the SEC’s attention. Bisys is the mutual fund administrator that’s paid millions in fines to the regulators. As it turns out, a fund owned by Bank One was mixed up with them, and JP Morgan inherited the problem when it picked up Bank One.
SEC investigation turns to J.P. Morgan Chase [New York TImes]

Jamie Dimon Up 47%; JPMorgan Up 1.7%

By

DIMON.jpgWe’ve said before that Jamie Dimon has a bit of a “story” problem (as in, nothing’s happening and he doesn’t have one) but you could generally rest assured that he was off cutting costs somewhere because, well, that’s what he does. But now it appears that JPMorgan’s cost-cutting back (as in, Dimon’s pay):

Executive pay has been a sensitive topic at JP Morgan, which awarded Chairman William Harrison and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon $22.3 million in compensation in 2005, representing increases of 39 percent and 47 percent from the year before. By comparison, JP Morgan’s stock gained 1.7 percent in the period.

JPMorgan Investors Back Resolution It Opposed [Reuters]
Related: Jamie Dimon: Is There Any There There?

What Would Jamie Buy?

By

images-1.jpgWe were just perusing the Vault.com IB message boards and buried under the pile of questions about internships, SAT scores and whether one can get a job at Carlyle as a managing director straight out of high school if one “knows someone” is a fairly extensive back-and-forth about what JPMorgan’s next acquisition will be. The guesses revolve mostly around retail expansion, though someone throws in the Morgan Stanley canard for good measure.
Some of the names floated:
SunTrust (the usual name floated)
Wachovia (ditto)
USB (west coast expansion is attractive, but Grundhofers probably wouldn’t sell)
PNC (nice east coast footprint but not a big enough deal for Dimon’s ego),
Wells Fargo (deposit limit problems)
Washington Mutual (possible deposit limit problems, S&L component that complicates things)
Someone points out that Dimon’s ostensible financial superstore strategy is exactly what Citi seems to be moving away from (see Legg Mason), which is ironic, unless Dimon’s logic is that he can do Citi better than Citi does Citi. All we know is that Dimon doesn’t have much of a story right now and he needs one. (And we need more material, so we’re secretly hoping for that dark horse MS merger.)