NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase & Company has become the first bank to settle a US antitrust lawsuit in which investors accused 12 major banks of rigging prices in the $5 trillion a day foreign exchange market.
Under James Dimon, chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, the firm developed to become the world’s biggest investment bank.
Dimon wrote in a letter to shareholders last year that each of their four main businesses runs at good economies of scale and gets important additional advantages from the other businesses.
The company said that a breakup could be valuable as it could reduce or remove JPM’s 20 per cent plus discount to pure play peers and increase capital returns and return on equity.
It was expected that the company may break up into smaller, separate companies. However, no formal announcements have been made by Chase officials regarding the future of their company.
JPMorgan could split itself into four main businesses or divide into consumer and institutional companies. New York based JPMorgan traded at a discount of 20% or more to standalone peers.
A breakup into two or four parts could unlock value in most aspects. However, the range of outcomes they evaluated is wide, at 5 per cent to 25 per cent potential upside.
