Financial Times is reporting that JPMorgan has already exited 70% of the "London Whale" derivatives positions that had gotten the bank into such hot water.
Such a quick exit isn't what anyone had expected, including maybe Dimon himself, making a case for the superbank being far more nimble than its critics give it credit for.
The London Whale Surfaces
Press reports first surfaced in April that a JPMorgan trader based out of the bank's chief investment office in London had taken such massive positions in the derivatives market that they were "moving the market," causing hedge fund managers there to nickname the then-unknown trader "the London Whale."
Dimon initially wrote off the press reports as "a tempest in a teapot," but a month later he was making the press rounds himself, forthrightly acknowledging that the initial reports had been right and apologizing for what he termed an "egregious" mistake caused by "sloppiness and bad judgment."
Since Dimon broke his own story, hardly a day has passed without him or the bank being somewhere in the news.
On the regulatory side, three separate federal agencies jumped almost immediately into the fray, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And Dimon has now testified twice before Congress on the matter.
Those baying for further regulation of the banks have used this incident as an opportunity to bay for more. Never mind that there's a raft of post-crisis U.S. legislation already coming into effect. Or that the global Basel III banking rules are also making their presence felt domestically. Or that there's a bill currently making the rounds in Congress calling for the outright breakup of JPMorgan, along with five of America's other biggest banks.
Critics say that Dimon should have seen this coming. And that if he didn't, then maybe JPMorgan and similarly sized banks are not only "too big to fail" but also too big to manage.
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