Poor fella's gonna need food stamps this year
Meanwhile, Ben's been keeping the squid well-fed
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JPMorgan cuts Dimon's bonus on "Whale" trade
7:59am EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co's (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) board of directors cut CEO Jamie Dimon's bonus in half following an investigation into the company's $6.2 billion "London Whale" trading loss, the company said on Wednesday.
Dimon's pay was slashed even though JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, said fourth-quarter net income jumped 53 percent, and earnings for 2012 set a record. Fourth-quarter results were helped by increased mortgage lending profit and a decline in costs for bad loans.
"As chief executive officer, Mr. Dimon bears ultimate responsibility for the failures that led to the losses in the Chief Investment Office," the bank said in the filing.
The trading loss, which was suffered primarily in the second quarter of 2012, has been a major embarrassment for the company.
Dimon's pay for 2012 was $11.5 million, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including a salary of $1.5 million and a bonus of $10 million. In 2011 Dimon was paid $23.1 million, including the same salary and a bonus of $21.5 million.
The bank's fourth-quarter net income rose to $5.69 billion, or $1.39 a share, from $3.73 billion, or 90 cents a share, a year earlier. Results for both periods included special items.
Revenue from mortgage production, excluding losses on repurchases of past loans, increased 51 percent to $1.6 billion.
The provision for credit losses plunged 70 percent to $656 million.
"We continued to see favorable credit conditions across our wholesale loan portfolios and strong credit performance in our credit card portfolio," Dimon said in a statement.
The trading loss is known for the "London Whale" nickname that hedge funds gave to JPMorgan trader Bruno Iksil for the large positions he established from London for the company's Chief Investment Office. The trade, made with credit derivatives, became too big for the company to exit easily.
(Reporting by David Henry in New York and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
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Goldman earnings soar on revenue gains, compensation cuts
8:20am EST
(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said its fourth-quarter earnings nearly tripled, driven by big gains in stock and bond values, increased revenue from dealmaking and lower compensation expenses.
Goldman, the fifth-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported earnings of $2.8 billion, or $5.60 per share, up from $978 million, or $1.84 per share, in the same period a year ago.
Analysts mostly had been forecasting much lower figures. Following its early morning report on Wednesday, Goldman shares were up 1.8 percent at $138 in premarket trading.
A significant part of Goldman's earnings boom came from improvements in market values in the stock and bond markets, as well as increased activity.
The New York-based investment bank said it took in "significantly higher" revenues from credit products and mortgages in its bond-trading business. Its investing and lending division, which mostly earns money from higher values on Goldman's own stock and bond investments, reported nearly $2 billion worth of revenue.
But gains were broad, with revenue up across each of Goldman's business lines, from investment banking to investment management. Overall, its revenue rose 53 percent to $9.2 billion from $6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Goldman's earnings were also helped by a sharp decline in compensation expenses, typically the biggest cost for Wall Street firms.
The bank said compensation fell 11 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago. The expense was just 21 percent of net revenue, roughly half of what the firm usually pays out to employees.
(Reporting By Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Chizu Nomiyama)
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