On the back of a decent quarter at JPMorgan Chase, CEO Jamie Dimon has signalled his desire to repay government money as quickly as possible and remove the strings attached to that money. Dimon has often said that JPMorgan Chase did not need the TARP bailout money it has received and only accepted because it was foisted upon them.
When asked during the firm’s conference call about the PPIP program to be used to help banks unload so-called toxic assets from their balance sheets, Dimon was very clear that he was going to stay away because of the string attached.
Chief executive Jamie Dimon made it clear that he wanted to follow Goldman Sachs’ lead by paying back JP Morgan’s $25bn in funding from the treasury’s troubled assets relief programme (Tarp) as soon as the government allowed it.
“We’d like to repay it as soon as possible,” said Dimon. “We’re waiting for guidance from the government of the United States. We want to do what’s in the interests of the US as well as in the interests of JP Morgan.”
In common with other top Wall Street executives, Dimon has become wary of political moves to restrict pay packages at banks receiving taxpayer bailouts and at Congress’s enthusiasm for limits on dividends, acquisitions, strategic moves and recruitment of foreign staff.
“Obviously we have the wherewithal,” said Dimon, although he hinted that the government might require JP Morgan to raise money through a share placing before repaying the money. “I don’t know what we’ll need to do because it may not be wholly up to us but I don’t think we need to [raise money],” he said.
When asked whether JP Morgan intended to use the Public Private Investment Plan (PPIP), a new treasury scheme designed to match up public and private funds to clean up banks’ toxic assets, Dimon allowed his frustration to show.
“We have no intention of using PPIP at all. We don’t need it,” he said. “We’re certainly not going to borrow from the federal government. We’ve learned our lesson on that.”
The PPIP is looking more and more like a program to help Citigroup (and possibly Bank of America) more than any other institution. Why Citigroup has not been nationalized is an open question.
See the video below for more deails:
Source
JP Morgan boss rejects fresh injection of US government aid – Guardian