On Monday it was announced by JPMorgan Chase that its chief investment officer, Ina Drew, is going to retire. This could be the first of many departures from the company since the bank announced that it lost $2 billion in trading recently. The firm’s losses are going to be investigated by one of its top executives, Mike Cavanagh. Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan chief executive, has apologized multiple times over the past couple of days for mistakes made by the firm. Dimon also mentioned the departure of Drew.
“Ina Drew has been a great partner over her many years with our firm,” Dimon said. “Despite our recent losses in the CIO, Ina’s vast contributions to our company should not be overshadowed by these events.”
The replacement for Drew will be a current JPMorgan senior executive, Matt Zames. Zames is the head of the Treasury Department’s Borrowing Advisory Committee. Dimon said that JPMorgan ‘made a terrible, egregious mistake.’ A candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, has called for Dimon to step down from the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“We need to stop the cycle of bankers taking on risky activities, getting bailed out by the taxpayers, then using their army of lobbyists to water down regulations,” Warren said.
Despite the loss, JPMorgan is still slated to make around $4 billion this quarter, so it did not hurt the bank too much. Dimon admitted on Sunday that the mistakes made by JPMorgan would probably increase the efforts to regulate the biggest banks in the country closer.
“This is a very unfortunate and inopportune time to have this kind of mistake,” Dimon said.
The massive losses were announced by JPMorgan on Thursday during a conference call that was very apologetic on the part of the bank. Dimon claims that a lack of collaboration between the government and business has hurt the business atmosphere of the country.
“It’s true to say we haven’t had true, common collaboration,” he said. “To me, it’s not Democrat or Republican. Democrats were so tough on Republicans that you’re seeing a little bit of that giveback at this point.” Dimon also urged the two parties to “put their knives down and get back to work for the American public.”
On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday, Senator Carl Levin from Michigan, said the following:
“This was not a risk-reducing activity that they engaged in. This increased their risk. So we’ve got to be very, very careful that the regulators here are not undermined by this huge effort to weaken the rule by putting in a huge loophole.”
