‘I was dead wrong,’ says contrite JP Morgan chief

The chief executive of JP Morgan, which last week stunned the market by announcing a $2 billion (£1.2bn) loss caused by its London operations, has admitted he was “dead wrong” to dismiss concerns about the bank’s trading last month.

Jamie Dimon said he did not know the extent of the problem when he said in April that the concerns were a “tempest in a teapot”.

In an interview on US television yesterday, Dimon said: “We made a terrible, egregious mistake. There’s almost no excuse for it.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The losses, which Dimon has acknowledged were linked to Bruno Iksil, a trader nicknamed the “London Whale”, came from trading in credit derivatives designed to hedge against financial risk.

Dimon is likely to be pressed for more details when he hosts the bank’s annual meeting in Florida tomorrow.

Related topics: