New York Post – Jamie Dimon’s been able to find Wall Street jobs for about half the payroll being axed when his JPMorgan Chase takes over crippled Bear Stearns next month.
Dimon gave a progress report yesterday on his acquisition of Bear Stearns in a federally forced shotgun marriage at a bargain $10 a share, or about $2.4 billion.
After the deal closes in three weeks, Bear Stearns will produce about $1 billion in profits to the merged banks in 2009, Dimon said.
However, he warned that a "recession just started" and could hammer the economy with a deep and extended slowdown.
In that case, Dimon predicted that JPMorgan’s consumer lending businesses would see losses double to $900 million by year’s end, primarily from credit cards and home-equity lending.
Dimon believes the bank may have to bolster its loan-loss reserves.
In the current quarter, Dimon said subprime mortgage losses could rise to between $200 million and $250 million, with prime mortgages generating about $100 million in losses.
Credit-card losses could swell to 5 percent in the second quarter, and as much as 6 percent next year.
Dimon said JPMorgan has found positions for 40 percent of Bear’s 14,000 employees, and helped place another 1,500 in jobs outside the company, for a total of about 7,100 people.
