EthicsBite™

Another exciting week for corporate ethics watchers!

JPMorgan Chase competes with Facebook for the top financial news story of the week as the major bank’s exposure to losses from its London hedging unit has a strong probability of growing. While the news for Facebook is almost totally upbeat, the combination of troubles in Europe and losses at one of the most reputable of the biggest banks has been bad news for the stock market all week.

Here are the highlights on JPMorgan Chase:

• Last weekend saw speculation that the entire London hedging unit would be closed down, and that the Chief Investment Officer, Ina Drew, would be asked to resign. There were also calls for Dimon to resign his position at the New York Fed.
• On Monday, Ina Drew announced that she would retire from the bank.
• On Tuesday, Jamie Dimon was facing his shareholders at their annual meeting in Tampa. Shareholders there defeated a proposal to separate the roles of Chairman and CEO, a proposal that would have meant the loss of one of those positions for Mr. Dimon.
• On Wednesday, several shareholder lawsuits against the bank were announced. The suits were focused on the bank’s alleged failure to appraise shareholders of the level of risks being taken.
• But the real news, reported early this morning in the Financial Times, is that JPMorgan Chase’s hedging unit may be sitting on a total exposure of $100 BILLION in risky trades, trades that it will be challenged to unwind. That provides the possibility of total losses multiple times larger than the $2 Billion that came to the CEO’s attention over a week ago.

Ethical assessment: As noted in prior posts the real issue here is fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and, due to the bank’s scale and role in the global economy, the investing public and the general public. The bank may not have broken any laws but the behavior of this particular part of the organization appears to not meet the professional ethical standards of any financial analyst, banker or licensed stockbroker. It does not meet the ethical standards of the communities (investing public, general public) that it serves.

In Brief

Chesapeake Energy – Corporate “raider” Carl Icahn was reported to be positioning himself for a move on the company. This may provide some temporary relief to Chesapeake’s employees’ retirement savings at the company which are estimated to be 38% invested in shares of the company. When are we going to stop using company shares as the basis for employee retirement programs? Isn’t it a principal of sound financial management to not put all of the eggs in the same basket?

News of the World – Rebekah Brooks, her husband and four others were charged in the UK phone hacking scandal. It also came out that, guess what, Ms. Brooks managed to cart off seven boxes of papers relevant to the case from her News of the World offices as the investigation was beginning last July. Hmmm. Hasn’t this been tried before?

Delete, shred, carry away. Rarely works in these high profile cases. Besides, if a physical document exits, there are multiple electronic versions out there all over the place. Yep, those electrons may be hard to see but they are also hard to destroy.