JPMorgan Chase could face $11 billion settlement
Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, was in Washington today meeting with U.S. attorney general Eric Holder. Reports indicated the two were talking about a series of investigations the bank has been under surrounding their pre-crisis mortgage dealings.
“They have been very busy,” says Tim Fernholz at Quartz. He says it’s expected JPMorgan Chase will have to pay about $11 billion to settle the civil and criminal investigations. Fernholz says that while the number may seem high, “it probably is not a huge blip on their earnings.”
The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the bank’s use of mortgage-backed securities. And while most banks were involved in that part of the industry, Fernholz doesn’t think “everybody was doing it” will be a useful excuse for Dimon.
Dimon faced backlash last year from shareholders around the continued legal problems the bank has found itself in.
“There’s been a lot of communication from JPMorgan lately saying that they’re trying to turn over a new leaf to cooperate with regulators, to try to be as transparent as possible,” says Fernholz. “And whether that’s just sort of P.R. or whether that’s a real thing, it’s clearly seen as a problem within the bank that they have all of these angry regulators trying to extract as much money as they can from them.”
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