Author Description

JPMorgan Chase & Company is the largest financial holding company in the U.S., with $2.4 trillion in assets. It is also the largest derivatives dealer in the world and the largest single participant in world credit derivatives markets. Its principal bank subsidiary, JPMorgan Chase Bank, is the largest U.S. bank. JPMorgan Chase has consistently portrayed itself as an expert in risk management with a “fortress balance sheet†that ensures taxpayers have nothing to fear from its banking activities, including its extensive dealing in derivatives. But in early 2012, the bank's Chief Investment Office (CIO), which manages $350 billion in excess deposits, placed a massive bet on a complex set of synthetic credit derivatives that, in 2012, lost at least $6.2 billion. The CIO's losses were the result of the so-called “London Whale†trades executed by traders in its London office -- trades so large in size that they roiled world credit markets. The magnitude of the losses shocked the investing public and drew attention to the CIO which was found, in addition to its conservative investments, to be bankrolling high stakes, high risk credit derivative trades that were unknown to its regulators. This is the report of a U.S. Senate investigation into the history of JPMorgan Chase “Whale Trades.†Figures and tables. This is a print on demand report.