Jamie Dimon

Is It Polish Craps? Is It Ukrainian Blackjack?

By

Senator Bob Menendez: I listen to this [hearing] and I paraphrase Shakespeare when I ask, a hedge or not a hedge, that is the question.
Jamie Dimon: [staring] Read more »

Jamie Dimon: Don’t Blame The Risk Committee!

By

They took JPMorgan through the financial crisis “with flying colors.” The Whale stuff was a blip. [Related]

  • 12 Jun 2012 at 5:14 PM

Jamie Dimon: It Most Likely Won’t Happen Again

By

“When we make mistakes, we take them seriously and often are our own toughest critic,” Dimon said in the remarks ahead of his appearance before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss losses linked to credit derivatives by New York-based JPMorgan’s chief investment office. “While we can never say we won’t make mistakes — in fact, we know we will — we do believe this to be an isolated event.” [Bloomberg]

  • 12 Jun 2012 at 3:53 PM

Paying Bankers In Derivatives Worked Out So Well For Credit Suisse, Let’s All Do It

By

BreakingViews has a couple of posts up about one of my favorite things in the financial universe, Credit Suisse’s habit of paying its bankers in structured credit instruments that take pages to describe. How’s that going? Great:

Three years ago, around 2,000 employees were forced to take some $5 billion of the riskiest assets from the Swiss group’s balance sheet as their bonuses. Now, recipients are being offered the chance to buy more. What once seemed like a punishment has turned into something of a perk.

Investors in the “Partner Asset Facility” already sit on a paper profit of around 80 percent, thanks to a recovery in the value of the original portfolio. That gain is essentially safe, since most of the assets involved have been liquidated or sold down and the funds are sitting in low-risk, low-return investments. The snag is that beneficiaries can’t get to the payouts until 2016.

To ease the pain of waiting, Credit Suisse is giving participants another bite. They have a chance to plough some of their paper profits back in, buying up to $1 billion of risky assets, including mortgage securities, from the bank’s books. Over a third of participants opted in to a similar offer late last year. Some of the purchases are to be funded by leverage, leaving perhaps half to come from willing PAF holders.

Phrases like “risky assets, including mortgage securities,” are always a bit of a minefield, but the sense is clear enough, which is that a whole lot of senior people at Credit Suisse are pretty keen to take money that is basically theirs, which is currently held in the form of basically cash, and invest that on a ~2x levered basis in, er, “risky assets, including mortgage securities,” which let’s just stipulate have a higher risk and higher return than cash.

How would you describe those people? Read more »

  • 05 Jun 2012 at 4:43 PM

Fourth-Highest-Paid Bank CEO Made Negative Ten Million Dollars in 2011

By

Here is a fun thing we can do, which is put arbitrary numbers in a list and see how they look. Shall we? We shall.

First, here is how much various bank CEOs and assorted other miscreants made in 2011, if you don’t worry too much about what “made” and “in 2011″ mean*:

This list is, of course, inspired by this exercise by Bloomberg, ranking the top 50 highest paid financial institution CEOs. But if you’re Lloyd Blankfein or, I mean, really, Henry Kravis, you are probably not planning your retirement around your paycheck. Instead you could to some approximation view your job running your financial institution as keeping an eye on the people responsible for your private wealth, in the form of your share ownership in that institution, and Lloyd’s $16mm 2011 paycheck hardly makes up for the $155mm of lost value on his GS shares. Read more »

  • 25 May 2012 at 10:45 AM

JPMorgan Risk Committee Directors Big On Life Experience, Wall Street Experience Less So

By

The three directors who oversee risk at JPMorgan Chase include a museum head who sat on American International Group Inc.’s governance committee in 2008, the grandson of a billionaire and the chief executive officer of a company that makes flight controls and work boots. What the risk committee of the biggest U.S. lender lacks, and what the five next largest competitors have, are directors who worked at a bank or as financial risk managers. The only member with any Wall Street experience, James Crown, hasn’t been employed in the industry for more than 25 years…The committee, which met seven times last year and hasn’t changed its composition since 2008, approves the bank’s risk- appetite policy and oversees the chief risk officer, according to the company’s April 4 proxy statement. [Bloomberg]

  • 21 May 2012 at 5:57 PM

Brian Moynihan Has Total Confidence In Jamie Dimon

By

He’s got this. Read more »

  • 21 May 2012 at 1:37 PM

Confidential To One Small Arachnid: Jamie Dimon Is Coming For You

By

The past couple of weeks, some might argue, have been the worst of Jamie Dimon’s professional career. Although being fired by Sandy Weill in 1998 was obviously a distressing time in Dimon’s life, a JPMorgan trader’s multi-billion dollar (and counting) loss appears to be even more painful for the CEO, who now has a reputation (and a title: “America’s Least Hated Banker”) to defend. While it’s unlikely that the blunder will cost him his job, every article written questioning Dimon’s judgment, suggesting that he is in fact fallible, and wondering aloud if he is simply a pretty face (that is about to get the regulation it has vociferously argued against rammed down its throat) clearly hurts. So far, Dimon has chosen to frame the situation, at least publicly, as a group fuck-up, one for which the responsibility is shared among himself, The Whale, The Whale’s bosses, and The Whale’s bosses’ bosses. Over the weekend, though, a heretofore unmentioned character, whose actions set in motion the events that served to tarnish JD’s halo, was added to story. And now, Dimon has a place to channel his anger: on a bloodsucking vermin whose days are numbered. Read more »

  • 15 May 2012 at 4:23 PM

Jamie Dimon: JPMorgan’s Balance Sheet Still Fortress-Esque

By

“We maintain a fortress balance sheet to manage surprises and setbacks like this,” Dimon said today. “I’m confident when we’re done here we’ll be a stronger company.” [Bloomberg, earlier]

  • 15 May 2012 at 4:16 PM

Lloyd Blankfein Finally Gets To Be The Prettiest Girl At The Ball

By

Time was, Jamie Dimon was the most popular CEO on Wall Street and America’s “Least Hated Banker,” for reasons that included the fact that the man has soulful blue eyes, charisma out the ass, and was in charge of one of the banks that a) didn’t go out of business during the financial crisis, like Lehman and Bear and b) supposedly didn’t actually need the bailout money the government made it take (as JD has said previously), like Bank of America and Citigroup. The man, in the hearts of many and especially the adoring press, could do no wrong. Which is why it probably stung a lot that Lloyd Blankfein, a Wall Street CEO who also possesses more charm than a person would know what do do with, who was also in charge of a bank that neither went out of business during the financial crisis nor required the bailout money it was forced to take (according to GS), and who is also the owner of a pair of baby blues, though in his case ones that sparkle, could only do wrong. And while LB is not one to gloat at another’s misfortune, especially that of a friend, he’s obviously feeling pretty good about being living proof of the old saying, “only one Wall Street CEO’s balls can be in a vise at a time,” and right now it’s JD’s turn. Read more »

  • 15 May 2012 at 12:26 PM

Jamie Dimon Might Clawback Whale Team’s Bonuses Or He Might Not

By

Dimon was approached by reporters after the [shareholder] meeting and was asked about whether executive pay would be taken back under the bank’s clawback provisions. “We will do the right thing…And that may well include clawbacks,” Dimon said. “The buck always stops with me.” [WSJ, earlier]