JPMorgan Offers Clients Greater M&A Insights via AI

JPMorgan Chase has launched a service designed to offer clients more insights into its expertise.

The banking giant’s “Special Advisory Services” initiative, announced Monday (Jan. 5), is designed to offer advice beyond standard merger and acquisition (M&A) or financing.

“Clients will have access to the firm’s expertise in critical areas of advisory services, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital assets, geopolitics, healthcare, supply chain, and sustainability, among others,” the announcement said.

As CNBC reported, the program was birthed as bankers noticed clients asking for greater detail into things like how it was dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) or which cybersecurity strategies it was employing.

This trend inspired CEO Jamie Dimon to formalize a group, which launched Monday, that can provide certain clients access to much of JPMorgan’s “secret sauce,” the report said.

“These capabilities are on par or better with some of the specialized consulting firms out there,” Liz Myers, global chair of investment banking with JPMorgan and head of the program, told CNBC. “We think it could help C-suite executives be more effective in their roles and learn from our best practices.”

The program will offer advice on things like investor relations, real estate selection, healthcare benefits and technology procurement, the report said. JPMorgan will not charge for these services, at least initially, but could establish a fee structure for clients seeking a more time-consuming or prolonged service.

“More than two-thirds of our experts are internally facing people – their No. 1 job is to make sure they’re delivering for our firm,” Myers said. “They’re a precious resource, to some extent, so we have to be thoughtful about who gets it.”

In other JPMorgan news, the bank last month successfully arranged a U.S. commercial paper issuance on the Solana blockchain.

The issuance, carried out on behalf of Galaxy Digital Holdings and purchased by Coinbase and Franklin Templeton, represented one of the earliest debt issuances ever executed on a public blockchain, the bank said at the time.

It was also among the first debt issuances in the U.S. to use the blockchain to issue and service securities, “a significant milestone for financial markets globally,” JPMorgan added in a news release.

“Today’s transaction is an important step toward understanding the role blockchain will play in the future of financial markets,” said Scott Lucas, head of markets digital assets, JPMorgan.