“We weren’t completely stupid,” Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said on Friday, explaining that he did not buy Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual without considering legal liabilities that might come with the deals.
In 2008 he sought and received assurances from the Securities and Exchange Commission that, post-acquisition, in looking at any possible violations by Bear, the agency would consider JPMorgan’s “role or more accurately, lack of a role in the underlying conduct”. Those words came in a “comfort letter” from Linda Thomsen, then director of the SEC’s enforcement division.
It does not provide much comfort now. Ms Thomsen’s guidance that JPMorgan’s “lack of a role” would be borne in mind does not seem to have been taken up by other officials five years on.