In spite of JPMorgan Chase’s well-publicized loss of more than $5 billion, just 14 percent of Americans polled correctly identified C.E.O. Jamie Dimon as a New York banker. Sixty-six percent say they don’t know who he is, while 9 percent believe he’s a Texas congressman, 7 percent think he’s an X Games skateboarder, and just 4 percent believe he’s a daredevil motorcyclist. [VanityFair]
Jamie Dimon
4 Percent Of Americans Think Jamie Dimon Is Prepping His Bike To Jump The 526 Feet Between The Top Of JPMorgan Headquarters And The Roof Of The Old Bear Stearns Building
By Bess Levin
Who wins the call-the-Whale-close? The headline number is a $4.4 billion loss this quarter but that is lower than it could have been because those losses propagated backwards through time:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) today reported that it will restate its previously-filed interim financial statements for the first quarter of 2012. The restatement will have no effect on total earnings or revenues for the company year-to-date.*
The restatement announced today will reduce the firm’s previously-reported net income for the 2012 first quarter by $459 million. The restatement relates to valuations of certain positions in the synthetic credit portfolio in the firm’s Chief Investment Office (CIO).
The total loss in the first quarter is now $1,378mm for Q1 (footnote 3 of page 14 here); add $4,409mm for Q2 (page 3 here) and you get a total final official loss of $5,787mm. So far.**
The restatement is fascinating, and Dimon is proud of it: “This is what the SEC chairwoman herself would have done if she had seen all the same facts at the same time.” Okay! But she probably wouldn’t have done this: Read more »
A Company Is In The Hole For $182 Billion, Hank Greenberg Can See The Merit In A Congressional Hearing But $2-9BN? Beat It
By Bess Levin
“Many companies have transactions that go bad,” Greenberg said today on “In the Loop With Betty Liu” on Bloomberg Television. “Everybody’s not paraded down to Washington to testify.” “He handled it OK,” Greenberg said of Dimon, 56. “It was really outrageous to have the CEO come down and testify before Congress because of a transaction that didn’t work out well.” [Bloomberg, related]
J.P. Morgan has added at least five new employees over the past month to the risk department in its Chief Investment Office, the unit responsible for trading losses that may have climbed to $9 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank is expanding the risk unit as it responds to the trading debacle and rebuilds the CIO, said one person familiar with the bank’s thinking. [FINS]
The House’s ping-ponging alternation of smacking and caressing Jamie Dimon today got pretty boring but I was struck by one number that Dimon mentioned, perhaps because it was about the only number that he mentioned. One Republican, with somewhat unclear intent,* suggested that the biggest risk to JPMorgan is that interest rates go up and asked Dimon how JPMorgan hedges that risk. And Dimon pointed out that actually JPMorgan is well set up for that, since it will make money if rates go up, and said “It probably cost us over $1 billion a year to benefit from rising rates.” You can’t as far as I can tell find that number in JPMorgan’s disclosures, but here is a potentially related thing: Read more »
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Posted in:
JPMorgan Flogging
Representative Carolyn Maloney: Why Didn’t You Lose Billions Of Dollars In New York? What’s London Got That We Don’t?
By Bess Levin
“Mr. Dimon, I thought you loved New York. Why did all this activity take place in London?”
Congressman: “Mr. Dimon, is it possible that JPMorgan could lose $2 trillion?”
Read more »
Meredith Whitney Not Worried About Jamie Dimon’s Ability To Handle House Financial Services Committee, Unlike Some Chief Executives She Knows
By Bess Levin
As you may have heard, later today Jamie Dimon will once again testify on Capitol re: a certain whale’s multi-billion dollar losses. Unlike last week’s hearing, conducted by the relatively reasonable Senate Banking Committee, this time Dimon will face questions and screeching from the relatively bat-shit House Financial Services Committee, a group of people we hope will not hold back. Yet despite the HFSC’s history of making witnesses look good, not matter how egregious their offense, by conducting inquiries in a manner that would suggest recreational bath salts abuse by the Congressmen and women, Bloomberg’s Tom Keene was still worried earlier this morning about Dimon’s ability to navigate the hearing. One person who wasn’t? Keene’s Bloomberg TV Surveillance guest Meredith Whitney. According to the analyst, Dimon be more than fine and while we’re on the subject, not that you asked, she can think of another bank CEO who’d crack under Congressional questioning on account of the fact that he doesn’t have Dimon’s eyes, which you could get lost in. Read more »
If we’re being totally honest, while it had its moments, last week’s Jamie Dimon Congressional hearing to discuss Whale Boy was a bit of a letdown, theatrically-speaking. This was probably due in large part to the fact that it was conducted by the Senate Banking Committee, and the Senate typically comes off intelligent and reasonable compared to the House,* and proceeded accordingly. As we surely don’t have to tell you, this is not the kind of hearing we are interested in. Read more »
“He didn’t win. He’s a loser. How? You lose when you go in front of Congress and you lose when you go out. Anyone that declares him a winner is wrong…He walked in a loser. Testified. Walked out a loser. And by the way, he agrees with me. He knows he’s a loser with no control and doesn’t even know what happened in his own bank…A loser. Crisis PR is psychiatry. You go in there as a guy who is stupid, you don’t come out being smarter. You don’t. You come out just as stupid…He’s a loser…This is not Michael Corleone with Frank Pentangeli in the back of the room. This is not Nevada gaming licenses…He’s a loser. It’s okay, man. He’s a loser. Maybe next year he’ll be a winner but he is a loser. Okay.” Read more »
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Posted in:
JPMorgan Flogging
Jamie Dimon: “We Are All Blessed To Have The American Financial System”
By Bess Levin
“It is be the best in the world.” We should give thanks and “stop shooting each other.”
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