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JPMorgan nixes calls for breakup in battle of bank giants

By
Kevin Dugan
Published Feb. 24, 2015, 12:30 p.m. ET

Jamie Dimon to Lloyd Blankfein: Size matters even more.

The JPMorgan Chase chieftain played the “bigger is better” game Tuesday with his Wall Street rival by pushing back against Goldman Sachs-led calls to break up his bank.

Dimon & Co. spent a good chunk of their time at JPMorgan’s annual investor day defending the nation’s biggest bank, which trades at a discount to some of its peers including Goldman and Morgan Stanley.

“In a capitalist world, ok, you better be giving the customer more — better, faster, quicker — or you lose,” Dimon said at the day-long event held at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters. “Our mix obviously works for the client.

“We’re not going to follow the lemmings off the table,” he added.

JPMorgan and Goldman, run by Blankfein, have been engaged in a tit-for-tat this year as competition for profits has risen across Wall Street.

Earlier this month, Blankfein said bankers should stop “whinging” — a British variant on whining — about tougher regulations after Dimon complained that his bank was “under assault” by regulators.

That followed a controversial report in January by Goldman’s lead bank analyst, who argued JPMorgan is a “victim of its own success” and would be worth about 25 percent more if it were broken up into four companies.

“Scale has always defined the winner in banking,” Marianne Lake, JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday. “We have been able to consistently demonstrate our ability to leverage that scale and successfully adapt.

“We have a unique asset, an irreplicable asset, in the shape of our company and the mix of our businesses.”

Despite its bigger-is-better mantra, the bank is looking to shrink in some areas under a $1.4 billion cost-cutting plan announced Tuesday. First up: closing 300 bank branches over the next two years, about 5 percent of the total.

With the popularity of mobile and online banking, tellers handled just 42 percent of all bank deposits last year, down from 90 percent in 2007, according to the bank.

Investors have been more vocal about JPMorgan’s size in the aftermath of new Federal Reserve rules requiring banks to hold more capital against their assets.

The fatter capital cushions are designed to curb risk and protect against another financial calamity like the 2008 crisis that claimed Lehman Brothers.

JPMorgan is trying to reduce some of its more expensive holdings. To that end, it will start charging or putting a cap on excess, or non-operating deposits, from institutions including hedge funds, private-equity firms and foreign central banks.

JPMorgan’s shares closed up $1.47, or 2.48 percent, at $60.83.