JPMorgan

Jamie Dimon Shook Up JPMorgan Management Post-CIO Loss Because He God Damn Well Felt Like It, Will Support The Asinine Reforms Threatening To Destroy America On A Dark Day In Hell

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Jamie Dimon, the outspoken chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, sat down on Tuesday for what banking analysts called a “fireside chat” during the Barclays 2012 Global Financial Services Conference. Known for his hands-on management style and confident swagger, Mr. Dimon has been navigating the fallout from a rare misstep in his career after JPMorgan announced a multibillion-dollar loss on a complex credit bet at its chief investment office unit. During a question-and-answer session with Jason Goldberg, a Barclays analyst, Mr. Dimon responded to questions about things like his stance on the mounting turmoil in Europe and regulatory changes, in particular the Volcker Rule, which restricts banks from trading with their own money. Mr. Goldberg started by asking Mr. Dimon about the rationale behind shaking up the upper echelons of JPMorgan’s executive suite in July. “It had nothing to do with the chief investment office,” Mr. Dimon said. He added that “there is nothing mystical, folks,” because the moves enabled greater cross-selling. “Cross-selling is a big deal, and we do an exceptionally good job,” he said…Tackling the issue of whether the big banks should be broken up, Mr. Goldberg asked Mr. Dimon about recent calls to break up the major banks. “There are huge benefits to size,” Mr. Dimon said. He noted that JPMorgan’s size allowed it to be “a port in the storm” during the market turmoil of 2008. “Big banks have a function in society.” The United States, he added, has the “best, widest, deepest and most transparent capital markets in the world.” Cautioning against needless reform, Mr. Dimon said, “Let’s make sure we keep that before we do a bunch of stupid stuff that destroys that.“ [Dealbook]

  • 06 Sep 2012 at 1:51 PM

US Authorities Are Investigating A Smaller, Sous Chef Of A Whale In JPMorgan’s CIO Office

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A fourth London-based JPMorgan Chase trader is under scrutiny in the investigation by U.S. authorities into the bank’s nearly $6 billion trading loss, according to sources familiar with the situation. Julien Grout, a trader who joined JPMorgan Chase in 2009, is drawing attention because he worked in the bank’s Chief Investment Office and reported to Bruno Iksil, the French credit trader who is a central figure in the federal probe, said the two sources. U.S. authorities are trying to determine whether traders in the bank’s London office, including Iksil, took steps to try and hide some of the losses the bank was incurring on a series of complex derivatives trades. In the trading community in London, Iksil became known as the London Whale because of the large positions he and his colleagues were taking on. Grout, who is also French, is still working for JPMorgan, according to a bank spokeswoman. [Reuters]

  • 29 Aug 2012 at 6:01 PM

Theory: JPMorgan Would Be In A Helluva Lot Better Shape If Jamie Dimon Would Take Four Months Vacation Each Year

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In her fascinating 1999 biography of J.P. Morgan,”Morgan: American Financier,” Jean Strouse writes, “He could, he said, do a year’s work in nine months but not in twelve.” Morgan would keep a workaholic’s schedule while in New York but would break for frequent trips to Europe, flopping around its spas to ward off depression and his hypochondriac fears of ill-health. He saw nothing macho about refusing holidays. The current crop of Wall Street CEOs might benefit from a similarly restorative schedule. If Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein were to hit Positano and J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon to take the waters in Baden-Baden from May to September, it may not help their image. But following Morgan’s example, it might be better for banks’ general health if their executives didn’t always feel they are in permanent crisis mode. [WSJ]

  • 16 Aug 2012 at 1:24 PM

Caption Contest Thursday

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“Swung by @JPmorganchase and got to see where all the action takes place.“ [Meghan Musnicki]

  • 13 Aug 2012 at 3:39 PM

If You Work At JPMorgan And Are Thinking About Losing A Few Billion, Take Note

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“And I want you to know the London Whale issue is dead,” Jamie Dimon recently told a bunch of school children. “The Whale has been harpooned. Dessicated. Cremated…I am going to bury its ashes all over.” [NYM]

  • 10 Aug 2012 at 2:25 PM

You Misplace 5 Or 6 Billion Dollars And All Of A Sudden People Stop Trusting You To Keep Track Of Your Money

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When JPMorgan’s whale drowned a lot of people asked “where were the regulators?” and that was a silly question, because the people with the most incentive and ability to keep the whale afloat were, in descending order, (1) the whale, (2) the whale’s bosses, (3) the whale’s bosses bosses, (4) the regulators, and (5) the people asking “where were the regulators?,” so if categories 1-3 missed the problem then there’s no reason to get all mad at category 4. “If X’s could do Y they wouldn’t be X’s” is an important tool to keep in your mental toolkit, and if regulators could distinguish good from bad trades they’d be at least risk managers and probably, like, Warren Buffett.

What regulators are supposed to do, ideally, is not pick trades but rather set up systems to prevent bad trades from having ruinous systemic effects, and a major method of doing so is capital regulation. JPMorgan lost $5.8 billion on whale-failing, and if you or I lost $5.8 billion we would probably be scaling back our vacation plans, but Jamie Dimon isn’t because JPMorgan had lots and lots more money where that came from. Capital!, in both senses of that exclamation.

This is a pleasing use of regulatory intelligence: Read more »

  • 09 Aug 2012 at 6:25 PM

JPMorgan Still Reaping What Whale Boy Hath Sown

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JPMorgan can’t outrun the ripples from its multibillion-dollar “London Whale” trading blunder. The largest U.S. bank admitted Thursday in a federal filing that it pushed back a plan to resume share buybacks, scaled back several key measures of capital at the request of regulators and lost money on 28 trading days in the second quarter. The developments came as the New York company tried to unwind a series of problematic positions taken by a trader in the bank’s Chief Investment Office nicknamed the “London Whale” for his outsize market bets. [WSJ]

  • 06 Aug 2012 at 5:45 PM

There Were Snacks At JPMorgan Today

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“Protesters outside 270 Park earlier this afternoon. They were giving out cake so Dimon can ‘have his cake & eat it too.’ Group called ChaseU.”

  • 02 Aug 2012 at 1:13 PM
  • Banks

Shadow Banking Is Just Like Regular Banking, Only Darker

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It feels virtuous every so often to take glance over at the triparty repo market. You get a nice dose of horrified vertigo and then go back to your life and don’t think about it for a while and that always feels better. Now is a good time to get back to it, what with continued worrying about money-market funds – a core player in the market – and two interesting things this week about triparty repo: this testimony from Matthew Eichner of the Fed to a Senate subcommittee, and this report from Fitch.

Here is how I imagine triparty repo:

  • A bunch of money market funds and other cash investors keep $1.8 billion of cash at JPMorgan and Bank of New York Mellon, the “clearing banks” in the triparty system.
  • A bunch of securities dealers keep a pile of securities – worth, on a good day, more than $1.8bn – to JPM and BoNY Mellon.
  • The dealers need money to fund those securities, because what are they going to do, pay for them themselves?
  • Every afternoon, the cash investors and the securities dealers frantically negotiate which dealers swap their securities (at negotiated haircuts) for which cash investors’ cash.
  • Every night, the cash sleeps in the (notional) arms of the securities dealers, while the securities (and a promise to buy them back in the morning) sleep in the (notional) arms of the cash investors.
  • Every morning, the cash wakes up and springs from the dealers’ beds back into the waiting arms of the cash investors, and vice versa etc.
  • Which means that the dealers need to borrow cash to be able to give it back to the investors. Where do they get the money?
  • Well, from JPMorgan or BoNY.
  • Where do JPM and BoNY get the money?
  • Well, from deposits.
  • Whose deposits?
  • Well, the deposits of the cash investors.

More or less, right? Read more »

  • 30 Jul 2012 at 4:55 PM

Bonus Watch ’12: JPMorgan

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Li’l Dimons started receiving numbers today. Read more »

  • 30 Jul 2012 at 10:47 AM

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

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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]