After reporting not so rosy fourth quarter results, JP Morgan Chase is restructuring the management of its investment banking group. It’s the second time in 15 months that the unit has faced upheaval.
In the latest overhaul, J.P. Morgan is replacing the regional structure of the unit with a global umbrella for the unit’s main products, such as credit, interest rates, equities and currencies.
"We simply must get this right in order to achieve our full performance potential," according to an internal memo issued yesterday by Steve Black and Bill Winters, who run the firm’s investment bank.
J.P. Morgan’s investment bank is one of the bank’s six main business segments. In addition to the trading business, the investment bank also includes the firm’s investment-banking and merger-advisory businesses; those operations aren’t affected by the latest overhaul.
Among the management changes, Don McCree, who is now deputy head of risk management for the bank, will join the investment-bank unit as head of global credit, which includes the bank’s loan, bond and credit-derivatives businesses. Mr. McCree had been an executive within the investment bank before moving to the bank’s risk department in 2003.
Also, Patrik Edsparr, who has been running the bank’s U.S. trading operations and global proprietary trading since the last shuffle in late 2004, will be responsible for the global interest-rate business; he will maintain responsibility for proprietary trading.
Carlos Hernandez, who was running the U.S. capital-markets and sales business, will now be responsible for the bank’s global-equities business.
The overhaul will eliminate at least two high-level positions within the bank’s European operations. John Corrie and Fawzi Kyriakos-Saad, who are the European heads of equities and credit, will leave the bank, according to the memo.
J.P. Morgan Chase Shakes Up Investment-Bank Unit Again – Wall Street Journal
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