(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co’s shock trading loss of at least $2 billion from a failed hedging strategy knocked financial stocks across the globe on Friday, as well as the reputation of the biggest U.S. bank by assets and its CEO Jamie Dimon.
For a bank viewed as a strong risk manager that navigated the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis without reporting a loss, the errors are embarrassing, especially given Dimon’s public criticism of the so-called Volcker rule to ban proprietary trading by big banks.
“This puts egg on our face,” Dimon said.
He conceded the losses were linked to a Wall Street Journal report last month about a London-based trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the ‘London Whale’, who, the paper said, amassed an outsized position which hedge funds bet against.
P.S. Do they get to “write off” this loss on their tax returns in order to further reduce the amount of tax J. P. Morgan Chase pays? Just asking…