The US Department of Justice has opened a preliminary investigation into the $2bn trading loss at JPMorgan Chase, adding to the pressure on Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, as he faced shareholders yesterday for the first time since the scandal broke.
The DoJ review is preliminary, a person familiar with the matter said, and is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York field office. The Securities and Exchange Commission is already conducting an investigation into the bank’s losses.
Lawyers said that regulators would look at what top executives, including Mr Dimon, knew when he dismissed concerns about trading activity at the bank’s chief investment office as “a tempest in a teapot” less than four weeks before disclosing “egregious” losses on credit derivatives trades.