JPMorgan Chase (JPM), which is under regulatory orders to tighten internal controls following a record trading last year, will face more sanctions in the coming months, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said.
The bet on credit derivatives that lost more than $6.2 billion was "extremely embarrassing, opened us up to severe criticism, damaged our reputation and resulted in litigation and investigations that are still ongoing," Dimon said today in a letter to shareholders. "We received regulatory orders requiring improved performance in multiple areas, including mortgage foreclosures, anti-money laundering procedures and others. Unfortunately, we expect we will have more of these."
Dimon again accepted blame on the New York-based bank's behalf for the mistakes and said he felt "terrible that we let our regulators down."
JPMorgan released Dimon's letter last year on April 4, one day before Bloomberg News first reported on market-distorting derivatives bets by the bank's chief investment office that erased as much as $51 billion in shareholder value at one point and prompted multiple regulatory probes.
In that letter, Dimon criticized U.S. and international authorities for producing regulations that threatened to undermine economic growth. While he agreed with the intent of most reforms passed by Congress, he said in last year's note that the end result lacked "intelligent design" with rules that were "uncoordinated and inconsistent with each other."
He also faulted the pace of implementation, arguing that policymakers' "very slow" work elevated mortgage costs and left banks confused about future capital requirements.
Dimon was put on the defensive about five weeks later as the bank disclosed mounting losses on the CIO's derivatives bets. The illiquid positions were amassed by U.K. trader Bruno Iksil, known as the London Whale because the bets were so big.
