PYMNTS-MonitorEdge-May-2024

J.P. Morgan’s Dimon Says Banks Must ‘Fight Back’ Against Regulators

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, CEO

Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, said Monday (Oct. 28) that his colleagues should fight against overregulation.

He said the industry is saddled with redundant or badly-conceived regulations on things like open banking, Reuters reported Monday.

“It’s time to fight back,” Dimon said at a conference, per the report. Lenders are afraid to “fight with their regulators because they would just come and punish you more.”

“We are suing our regulators over and over and over because things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies,” he added. “A lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals.”

Dimon referenced a plan floated by regulators last year to line up their standards with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to help the industry better handle economic shocks, saying “the devil is in the details,” according to the report.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr revealed plans in September to hike big bank capital by 9%, down from an earlier increase of 19%, a victory for big banks.

Barr said in a speech at the Brookings Institution Sept. 10 that the 9% proposal means that the “largest, most complex firms should be subject to the most stringent requirements, in light of the costs that their potential failure would impose on the broader financial system and thus on businesses and households.”

Dimon said earlier this month that regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom have made it tougher for companies to go public. Increasing expenses from litigation and regulatory filings have helped cause the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) to lag while public market valuations have soared.

“I think it would be incumbent for us to make it easier and cheaper to go public, and we have to figure out a way to do that,” Dimon said at the time.

He also addressed bank mergers, saying more midsize banks should be permitted to merge and the government should not get involved “in every single little bank deal.”