JPMorgan profit soars on market rally
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s profit rose more than four-fold to $3.28 billion in the last three months of 2009, but the results released Friday were tempered by rising loan losses at its consumer bank. Its shares fell almost 1 percent in early trading.
The bank had a sobering asessment of the economy, warning that it cannot say it has seen defaults on mortgages and other loans peak. Its earnings came on profits from its investment banking and asset management businesses, which thrived amid the now 10-month-old market rally. JPMorgan Chase earned $702 million a year earlier when the near-collapse of the mortgage banking business forced it to write down the value of billions of dollars in loans.
Over the past year, record-low interest rates have allowed banking companies to profit when lending money at higher rates. And the boom in the financial markets have brought in billions of dollars in trading and underwriting revenue that were decimated a year earlier by the stock market crash.
Investors were disappointed, however, probably because the company didn’t raise its 5 cents per share quarterly dividend, as the market had hoped.