Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Is that show even on TV anymore? And if it is, are Bo and Hope still together? (Note to self: ask Mom.) Meanwhile, on to another long-running melodrama, the madcap saga we call the market. Where will the Street lead us in 2013? Read More
JPMorgan Chase is waiving checking account and loan fees for commercial and consumer banking customers in seven states affected by Hurricane Sandy, according to a press release posted on its website.
The banks said it would waive or credit certain fees incurred between tonight and Wednesday, Oct. 31. for customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Read More
There’s been a fair amount of talk lately about departures from JPMorgan’s inner circle, which is what will happen when veteran executives start departing or shifting duties.
Four executives have departed from the firm’s 15-member operating committee in the last year, including, of course, Ina Drew, the firm’s former chief investment officer who fell on her sword following the multi-billion trading loss associated with the London Whale. In the shake up that followed, younger executives Mike Cavanagh and Matt Zames rose to new prominence, while Jes Staley, once thought to be a possible successor to Jamie Dimon, went off to audition for Barclays top job.
Then Barry Zubrow, the firm’s head of regulatory affairs and former chief risk officer, said he would retire at the end of the year, followed by a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday that chief financial officer Doug Braunstein would exit his current post for a new role at the bank sometime over the next two quarters.
Fortunately for the kibbitzers among us, JPMorgan had a conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings scheduled for the this morning. Read More
Two giant JPMorgan profiles landed this week, and it was a familiar character who delivered some of the more memorable lines in each of them. James Bainbridge Lee Jr.—better, Jimmy—is the legendary deal maker this paper once described as “the maestro of the syndicated loan market, Wall Street’s most famous corporate bailout artist,” now the vice chairman for investment banking at JPMorgan.
That position—and, we suppose, that he was willing to pick up the phone and go on record—made him a natural source for Vanity Fair’s profile of Jamie Dimon, in which Mr. Lee offers the first (and last?) word on the JPMorgan chief executive (“[He] has moral courage running through his veins”); and also serves as a catalyst for the tidbit VF used to hype the story—in the middle of the hubbub over the London Whale, Mr. Lee asked New England Patriots quarterback to tell Mr. Dimon “to hang in there.“ Read More
In October 2008, with the financial system teetering, the U.S. Treasury convened a meeting with the leaders of America’s biggest banks. The agenda: to convince the executives to accept billions of dollars in bailout funds, whether the bank bosses believed their institutions needed it, or not. The story has been told before, now it’s been Read More
JPMorgan’s board of directors is weighing lower bonuses for CEO Jamie Dimon and other top executives in light of the $5.8 billion trading loss the firm suffered this year, according to The Wall Street Journal; Citigroup is also looking at executive pay in an attempt to appease shareholders.
Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS trader charged Read More
Nearly a month after former Citigroup chief executive Sandy Weill called for the break-up of the biggest U.S. banks, current Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told the Financial Times that the bank is sized just right.
How to define ‘subprime?’ The answer may determine the fate of the government’s case against three Freddie Mac Read More
Last week, fans of The Notebook got some exciting news: Ides of March star Ryan Gosling was getting his own coloring book! Thanks to pop artist and pop culture paper doll creator Mel Elliott, you too can now own a little piece of Gosling to color in any way you like. Choose from whichever Gosling suits your erotic fantasy: the book has everything from Drive Gosling to Blue Valentine Gosling to Lars and the Real Girl Boss-Gos. Read More
Sixty Minutes and Vanity Fair asked a bunch of Americans who Jamie Dimon is—two-thirds didn’t know, and another 20 percent of respondents believed him to be either an X-Games skateboarder, daredevil motorcyclist or Texas congressman. This is a funny and sad if not unsurprising thing about Americans, but more importantly a potential point of embarrassment for he of the salt-and-peppery good looks and formerly gold-standard risk management chops. (“What kind of trading losses do I need to suffer before they know me!”) Well, Mr. Dimon can rest easy: Americans don’t know the names of the leaders of any of the country’s biggest banks*, and to prove it, we conducted our own informal survey**: Read More
From outside the elite preserves of the financial industry, Britain’s LIBOR scandal follows a wearily familiar narrative arc: Yes, a leading investment bank has confessed to gaming a central borrowing index—the so-called London Interbank Offered Rate, which establishes how much banks charge each other to borrow money. And yes, that bank—Barclays of London—has coughed up 290 million pounds in fines to stave off the prospect of a criminal prosecution. But jaded consumers of financial news can be forgiven for thinking that this all amounts to the perennial status quo for the investment class, in the city and on Wall Street alike. Haven’t these characters always sought to live by their own self-seeking code—and haven’t fund managers long been little more than glorified corruptionists? If we systemically prosecute this sort of behavior, are we just futilely attempting to issue a restraining order against human nature?
In reality, the LIBOR dustup is a very big deal—and largely because of its very routine profile. Read More
