JPMorgan Chase’s chief investment officer resigned last night, becoming the first head to roll in response to the bank’s massive $2.3 billion trading blunder.
Ina Drew, 55, and at least two other executives will lose their jobs in the fallout from a scandal that has tarnished the bank’s once-sterling reputation and that of its respected CEO, Jamie Dimon, according to sources.
Drew, one of the most powerful women on Wall Street, is expected to resign immediately, sources said. She earned an estimated $15.5 million last year as head of the bank’s Chief Investment Office, which oversaw the trading unit in London that incurred many of the losses.
Achilles Macris, a London-based manager of the desk where the funky derivatives trades were authorized, and Javier Martin-Artajo, another senior trader, are also on the chopping block, according to published reports.
Sources say that the execs could also lose their bonuses to “claw backs.” A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.
The so-called “London Whale,” the French-born Bruno Iksil, who has been widely linked to a huge $100 billion bet on an obscure index, is not currently on the list of those to be fired, sources said.
A New Jersey native and Johns Hopkins graduate who was known for her brains as well as her appetite for risk, Drew is one of the few women to have risen to the upper echelons of Wall Street — only to fall from grace.
The firings come just days after Dimon dropped the $2 billion trading bombshell in a hastily arranged conference call on Thursday. A contrite Dimon referred to the loss as “sloppy” and the bank’s handling of it as “poorly executed” and “poorly monitored.”
Sources said the bank’s risk manager, John Hogan, was one of the first execs to highlight the risky trade and forge a plan of action.
Yesterday, in an interview on “Meet the Press,” Dimon said he was “dead wrong” in dismissing reports questioning the risky hedging strategies and said he had given regulators ammunition to impose tougher regulations on Wall Street. “This is a very unfortunate and inopportune time to have this kind of mistake,” he said.
The dismissal of Drew comes as JPMorgan’s trades are being examined by regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and London’s regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority.
JPMorgan shares fell nearly 9.3 percent on Friday to $36.96, losing much of what some investors refer to as the “Dimon premium.”
mark.decambre@nypost.com
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, JPMorgan, Wall Street, Bruno Iksil, London, London, bank, powerful women, Javier Martin-Artajo
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