Nothing SOx-y About SEC’s JP Morgan “Whale” Settlement
If the JP Morgan “Whale” settlement was a true Sarbanes-Oxley success story, we’d see some bank executives going to jail. For a change.
If the JP Morgan “Whale” settlement was a true Sarbanes-Oxley success story, we’d see some bank executives going to jail. For a change.
PwC has an ongoing independence conflict in performing the Ally/ResCap independent foreclosure review. This conflict is disturbing on two fronts.
I put two new columns up at Forbes recently that talk about JPMorgan, PwC, Senator Levin’s “Whale” hearings, and all the other stuff JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon are really worried about.
Here’s a compilation – updated – with links for the columns/posts I’ve written about the mortgage servicer foreclosure reviews mandated by the April 2011 SEC/Fed consent orders, the April 2012 Attorneys General mortgage settlement and the intersection of the two regulatory actions.
I thought after all that had happened at JPMorgan Chase last year – for example, billions in losses from the “whale” trade, investigations into Libor and AML illegal acts, multiple lawsuits including by the New York Attorney General for foreclosure fraud – someone would take a close look at internal audit and, maybe, make some big changes. I was wrong.
I was the first to report on December 6 the irony of Deloitte having been selected by, of all banks, JP Morgan Chase. The high likelihood of a conflict between the bank and the audit firm, and possibly the individual Deloitte partners assigned to the JP Morgan Chase review, should have been obvious to anyone at the OCC. It turns out I was right.
My October 6 column for American Banker was cited by Congresswoman Maxine Waters and others to support the strong management of conflicts of interest by the OCC in the mortgage servicer reviews as well as full disclosure of vendors and their engagement letters with the banks. On November 22, 2011, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) disclosed the names of the consultants, their clients and redacted versions of the engagement letters between the banks and consultants.
I’m working a double shift this week covering two important conferences in Chicago.
The 27th Annual Futures Industry Association Futures and Options Expo starts Monday night and runs through Thursday at the Hilton on South Michigan Avenue. I’m really looking forward to the networking sessions, courtesy of my media pass under Forbes.com. Also in town this week is the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Conference. This promises to be very interesting, especially in light of my new assignment as a columnist for American Banker.
My latest column, “Banks Hire Friendlies for ‘Independent’ Foreclosure Reviews”, is on line now at American Banker’s BankThink.