Two of JPMorgan Chase’s top executives in London are to leave as part of a shake-up of its investment bank following last year’s disappointing trading performance.
John Corrie and Fawzi Kyriakos-Saad, European heads of equities and credit, will leave because of a reorganisation, to be announced on Monday, designed partly to improve risk management. Their jobs have been eliminated by the scrapping of the current regional management structure in favour of one based on global product groups.
Wall Street and the City of London have been awash with speculation about a shake-up of JPMorgan’s investment bank, fuelled by recent comments by Jamie Dimon, the group’s new chief executive. Earlier this month, Mr Dimon described its fourth-quarter trading results as “disappointing” but said he was “confident of building a very good investment bank”.
Some senior executives believe the investment bank is the new focus for Mr Dimon and for Frank Bisignano, who Mr Dimon recently hired as chief administrative officer from Citigroup. Other insiders say the changes have been in the works for some time and have been spearheaded by Steve Black and Bill Winters, co-heads of the investment bank. The move towards a structure based on global product groups brings JPMorgan in line with most of its big rivals.
JPMorgan will retain its regional organisation for client coverage and mergers and acquisition advice. Its joint venture with Cazenove in London is unaffected.
Under the shake-up, Don McCree, deputy head of risk management for the group, becomes head of global credit. Patrik Edsparr, head of Americas trading, becomes global head of rates and securitised products, moving from New York to London. He remains head of proprietary trading and principal investment. Carlos Hernandez, who runs all origination and distribution in the US, will be global head of equities.
Currencies and commodities, which are already run on a global basis, will continue to be headed by David Puth, who will get added responsibility for emerging markets.
Insiders say the changes should help JPMorgan’s efforts to boost its European business in areas such as securitised products, such as commercial mortgage-backed securities, in energy and in structured investments, where it is strong in the US.
The performance of JPMorgan’s investment bank last year was marred by volatile results from trading and its earnings were flat at $3.66bn in a year when competitors saw strong growth.
