Fall Of The Titan: JPMorgan faces scrutiny after $2bn loss

NEW YORK: One of the pillars of Wall Street — bank JPMorgan Chase — faced new scrutiny Saturday after it reported a shocking $2 billion derivatives loss that even its pugnacious chief executive called “egregious.” Securities and Exchange Commission, the government’s top financial regulator, is inquiring into the matter and will probably examine the bank’s past regulatory filings about the internal unit that placed the trades, as well as recent statements from the firm’s top executives. The titan sent shivers through the markets with the loss, after having convinced many that a well-managed bank could manage the risks of complex derivatives that lay behind the 2008 financial crisis. The firm’s stock closed down 9.3% at $36.96, wiping around $14 billion off the market value of the country’s largest bank. JPMorgan was also hit with a downgrade by the rating agency Fitch, and S&P cut its outlook to “negative.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 13^th, 2012.