J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressJamie Dimon at a Senate Banking Hearing in June.Jamie Dimon, the outspoken chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is returning to Washington to face another round of questions about his bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss.
Less than a week after he appeared at a relatively tame hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Dimon is set to testify on Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee. He is sticking to the same script. Once again, he will apologize for the misstep while playing down its effect on the bank and the broader financial system.
This time, Mr. Dimon will have company. The committee will also hear from the bank’s regulators, including the comptroller of the currency and the general counsel of the Federal Reserve.
Both regulators, who will be joined by the leaders of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are under fire concerning their oversight.
Thomas J. Curry, who as comptroller is expected to receive the brunt of the scrutiny, said in prepared testimony that his agency was evaluating “lessons learned from this episode that could enhance risk control and risk-management processes.” Mr. Curry, whose remarks largely echo testimony he delivered before the Senate this month, added that trading losses raised “questions about the adequacy and rigor of” the bank’s “risk-management practices.”
The hearing, senior House staff members say, is expected to be a referendum on regulators and a series of new rules under way. The hearing is likely to feature partisan squabbles over the rules, which stem from the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law.
For Democrats who support the overhaul, the hearing presents a forum to highlight how new oversight would rein in the risky derivatives trading that prompted the blowup at JPMorgan. But some Republican members of the panel have introduced legislation that would exempt some derivatives from oversight.
“The issue here is not so much JPMorgan Chase as what it says about the need to keep going forward regulating derivatives,” said Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the law’s co-author. Mr. Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House committee, argued that Mr. Dimon “should help us support” the crackdown on risky trading.
Republican House members are expected to give Mr. Dimon another opportunity to criticize potential regulations, in particular the Volcker Rule, which bans banks from trading with their own money. Mr. Dimon has been a vociferous critic of the rule. At the Senate hearing last week, he called the rule unnecessary when “added on top of other stuff.”
The bank’s loss, which could reach as much as $5 billion, has highlighted the murky line between trading and hedging. Lawmakers will most likely examine whether banks are making proprietary bets under the guise of hedging, which is allowed under the Volcker Rule.
Despite the losses, the Senate hearing last week underscored how Mr. Dimon still has considerable sway in Washington. Lawmakers mainly lobbed softball questions, with some Republicans complimenting Mr. Dimon.
It’s unclear how he will fare in front of the House panel. The committee, whose ranks include some 70 members with both friendly and critical views of Wall Street, has a feistier flair than the subdued Senate panel.
Even so, Mr. Dimon is expected to offer few fresh details until the bank reports its quarterly earnings on July 13. He is likely to deny any implication that the trade hurts the bank’s long-term health.
“We will not make light of these losses, but they should be put into perspective,” he said in the prepared remarks, which tracks nearly word for word with his remarks prepared for the earlier Senate panel hearing. “We will lose some of our shareholders’ money — and for that, we feel terrible — but no client, customer or taxpayer money was impacted by this incident.”