Ever since JPMorgan Chase disclosed a multibillion-dollar trading loss this month, the central mystery has been how a bank known for its skill at risk management could err so badly.
JPMorgan Chase, via Bloomberg News
Ina Drew resigned as head of JPMorgan’s chief investment office. She was the bank’s fourth-highest-paid officer.
As early as 2010, the senior banker who has been blamed for the debacle, Ina Drew, began to lose her grip on the bank’s chief investment office, according to current and former traders. She had guided the bank through some of the most rugged moments of the 2008 financial crisis, earning the trust of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, in the process.
But after contracting Lyme disease in 2010, she was frequently out of the office for a critical period, when her unit was making riskier bets, and her absences allowed long-simmering internal divisions and clashing egos to come to the fore, the traders said.
The morning conference calls Ms. Drew had presided over devolved into shouting matches between her deputies in New York and London, the traders said. That discord in 2010 and 2011 contributed to the chief investment office’s losing trades in 2012, the current and former bankers said.
“The strife distracted everyone because no one could push back,” said one current trader in the office who insisted on anonymity because of the nature of the issue. “I think everything spiraled because of the personality issues.”
Mr. Dimon has described the trades as “sloppy” and “stupid,” but has not identified the specific mistakes. The trading loss, initially estimated at $2 billion but now said to equal at least $3 billion, is the most embarrassing misstep of Mr. Dimon’s seven-year tenure, and it has also strengthened the hand of regulators in Washington who are in the final stages of writing rules that could reshape the banking industry. In his radio address on Saturday, President Obama urged tighter restrictions on banks’ trading activity.
JPMorgan and Ms. Drew declined to comment. Mr. Dimon is due to make a presentation Monday at an investor conference in Manhattan sponsored by Deutsche Bank. While JPMorgan’s stock has suffered since the disclosure of the loss, the bank’s overall health remains strong, and the company is expected to post a significant profit in the second quarter.
Ms. Drew, 55, resigned as chief investment officer last week. In 2011, she earned roughly $14 million, making her the bank’s fourth-highest-paid officer.
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