NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank by assets with operations in Akron, said Wednesday its fourth-quarter earnings shot up 55 percent over the year.
The bank made $5.3 billion after paying preferred dividends, compared with $3.4 billion this time a year ago.
Per share, those earnings amounted to $1.40, blowing away the $1.16 expected by analysts polled by research firm FactSet.
Revenue also beat expectations. It rose 10 percent over the year, to $24.4 billion, after stripping out an accounting charge. Mortgage originations jumped 33 percent.
The bank also announced that executives and board members had finished their separate reviews of the bank’s surprise 2012 trading loss, which eventually ballooned to $6 billion.
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon had his pay cut by half after a review of losses at the bank’s chief investment office (CIO) found he bears responsibility for the blunders.
The CEO’s compensation for 2012 is $11.5 million, the New York bank said on its website, compared with $23 million a year earlier. The 2012 sum includes a $1.5 million salary and $10 million of incentive compensation.
“Mr. Dimon bears ultimate responsibility for the failures that led to the losses in CIO and has accepted responsibility for such failures,” the company said after spending about eight months reviewing what Dimon, 56, has called “egregious mistakes” at the CIO.
JPMorgan is working to rebuild investors’ trust after losing more than $6.2 billion in last year’s first nine months on derivatives bets by U.K. trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the London Whale because his positions were so big. The debacle fueled legal claims against the company and its executives, prompted probes in the U.S. and abroad and this week led to the first regulatory sanctions, as banking watchdogs found internal-control “deficiencies.”
The bank said its review of Dimon took into account his decisions to replace senior managers, efforts to claw back their pay and the formation of a team to examine what went wrong.
“Once Mr. Dimon became aware of the seriousness of the issues presented by CIO, he responded forcefully by directing a thorough review and an extensive program of remediation,” according to the presentation.