Volcker Rule

Another executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co. is expected to leave his post in the wake of the bank's multibillion-dollar trading loss, the Wall Street Journal reports. Barry Zubrow is expected to step aside as head of the bank's corporate and regulatory affairs by the end of the year, The Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. Zubrow had previously worked as JPMorgan's chief risk officer. As head of regulatory affairs, for example, Zubrow authored the bank's comment letter on the so-called Volcker Rule, a key part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform that, when implemented, would sharply restrict the extent to which banks could trade with their own funds.

WASHINGTON - The $2-billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co. rekindled fears about the stunning risks still being taken on Wall Street, reviving demands for tougher financial rules and calls for the nation's biggest banks to be broken up. U.S. and British regulators said they were investigating the huge loss in a trading portfolio at JPMorgan. The bank saw its stock tumble 9% on Friday, the day after it disclosed that traders in New York and London had made misguided investments in complex derivatives in an effort to hedge against losses.

This week JPMorgan Chase disclosed that bumbling by its traders caused $2 billion in losses in about six weeks, with potentially more to come. But the bank's chief executive, James Dimon, said Thursday that the company still expects to earn more than twice that amount after taxes this quarter. Those earnings won't match the $5.38 billion the bank took in from January through March, but it's not meager either. In other words, the loss that sent the bank's shares down about 10% Friday won't actually leave the company in the red. It just won't be printing money quite so rapidly.

WASHINGTON - Two key financial regulators told senators Tuesday that they learned of the huge trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co., through media reports and that the public wouldn't be protected from the fallout from future incidents until new rules are finalized to allow better monitoring of such trades. In the first of several congressional hearings to look at the loss, the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave some details about their investigations into the incident.

WASHINGTON -- Regulators are looking into the $2-billion trading loss by JPMorgan Chase & Co., the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday as lawmakers and analysts said the bank's revelation would increase pressure for tighter financial rules. “I think it's safe to say that all the regulators are focused on this,” SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro told reporters after a speech at a Washington conference, according to news reports. She would not comment further.

Scrambling to meet an end-of-the-week deadline, House and Senate negotiators worked into early Friday in a marathon session to complete the most far-reaching rewrite of financial rules since the Depression. Lawmakers were on the verge of agreeing on the creation of a new agency to protect consumers in the financial marketplace, although most auto dealers would be exempt from its oversight. Members of the joint House and Senate conference committee also agreed to limit risky investments by banks, a provision known as the Volcker rule.

WASHINGTON - As JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon prepares for another day on the congressional hot seat this week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned lawmakers and regulators not to overreact to the bank's huge trading loss. "Hiding money in a mattress isn't a strategy for a growing, prosperous, economy, but that seems to be the road some want us to go down," Thomas Quaadman, vice president of the U.S. Chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, wrote on the business group's blog Monday.

WASHINGTON -- The "King of Wall Street" returns to Capitol Hill today, this time to explain how JPMorgan Chase & Co. sustained a $2-billion hole in its "fortress balance sheet. " Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chairman and chief executive officer, will face questions from the Senate Banking Committee on how the vaunted bank was stung by risky bets like those that bedeviled its Wall Street peers in the financial crisis. JPMorgan last month disclosed at least $2 billion in losses from risky derivatives trades.

WASHINGTON — The top U.S. bank regulator had no inkling of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s more than $2-billion trading loss until just weeks before it became public — even though the agency had 65 examiners working full-time at the firm's Manhattan headquarters and other company offices. To some lawmakers, the acknowledgment was another black mark for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which has been criticized for not being more aggressive in its oversight of major financial institutions in the years before the financial crisis.

Barely four years after Wall Street's wrong-way bets plunged the world into a financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase & Co. admitted it lost $2 billion from a trading portfolio that was supposed to have helped the bank manage credit risk. "These were egregious mistakes," said Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, who is considered one of the world's savviest bankers. "We have egg on our face, and we deserve any criticism we get. " The announcement stunned the financial industry, in part because it came from such a highly regarded bank.