Book a boat if you want to go Whale watching.
That’s the message Jamie Dimon hopes to deliver at JPMorgan Chase’s annual investor day in New York tomorrow, some nine months after the infamous “London Whale” blew a $6 billion hole in the bank’s balance sheet.
Dimon will stress that the nation’s biggest bank has been growing its business and taking market share in a bid to convince investors and analysts that there will be no further whale sightings.
JPMorgan, for instance, has boosted its private banker ranks to better cater to wealthy investors, adding some 650 bankers since 2008, according to people familiar with the matter.
Dimon is also expected to tout the bank’s ability to ring up record profits in good times and bad. JPMorgan reaped $21.3 billion in profits in 2012, a record year despite rocky markets that shook rivals here and abroad.
The bank boss also believes that the firm is moving beyond most of the issues stemming from the mortgage crisis. Along with rivals, JPMorgan has had to shell out billions to deal with claims stemming from faulty foreclosure practices.
The bank — which shed a whopping $51 billion in market cap in the wake of the massive wrong-way derivatives bet — has undergone a dramatic revamp of its risk management and leadership ranks.
Dimon, who took a 50 percent pay cut as punishment for the debacle, is hoping that the overhaul is enough to quiet critics, including a group of shareholders intent on stripping him of his chairmanship. A large public employee pension fund has seized on the whale fiasco to bolster its case for splitting the chairman and CEO jobs.
A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.