【英语新闻】摩根大通衍生品投资失误损失20亿美元

JPMorgan loses $2bn in ‘egregious’ error

By Tom Braithwaite in New York

JPMorgan Chase announced a surprise $2bn trading loss on credit derivatives trading, which chief executive Jamie Dimon blamed on “errors, sloppiness and bad judgement” and warned “could get worse”.

The shock disclosure, made after the market closed in a regulatory filing, sent shares in the bank down by about 6 per cent and prompted renewed calls for tougher regulation.

JPMorgan said the mark-to-market losses came in the bank’s chief investment office, a unit set up to invest excess deposits, which has drawn controversy after hedge funds alleged it was taking big proprietary bets.

Proprietary trading is set to be banned in the US by the forthcoming “Volcker rule” and the losses revealed on Thursday are likely to stiffen regulators’ resolve to enforce that ban broadly.

“It plays in to the hands of a bunch of pundits out there,“ Mr Dimon said on a hastily convened conference call. “This trading may not violate the Volcker rule but it violates the Dimon principle.”

In his opening remarks, he accepted responsibility and apologised. “These were grievous mistakes, they were self inflicted, we were accountable and we happened to violate our own standards and principles by how we want to operate the company. This is not how we want to run a business.”

The mistake was “one we put in the egregious category and I understand fully why you or anybody else will question us generally.”

Mr Dimon has long taken pride in JPMorgan’s superior risk management and its “fortress balance sheet”. It is a blow to the former and the bank’s core capital level would be reduced from 8.4 per cent of risk-weighted assets to 8.2 per cent under new Basel III rules, Mr Dimon said.

The stated goal of the CIO is to hedge JPMorgan’s loan portfolio and invest excess deposits. Its $2bn losses, incurred in less than six weeks, were offset by profits elsewhere. JPMorgan said that the division’s overall performance in the second quarter was for an estimated loss of about $800m compared with an expected $200m profit.

Turbulent credit markets exacerbated flaws in the trading strategy, JPMorgan said. Since the company does not want to conduct a fire sale of its positions, it is stuck with the exposure for some time.