Securities Lawyers Blog
On August 14, 2013, the Securities & Exchange Commission issued a press release explaining that it had charged two JPMorgan traders with attempting to conceal investor losses by overvaluing the investments in a portfolio that they managed. The traders were Javier MarBecause of the overvalued investments, JPMorgan’s first quarter income before income tax expense was overstated by $660 million because of the alleged misconduct.
From the SEC:
The SEC alleges that Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout were required to mark the portfolio’s investments at fair value in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and JPMorgan’s internal accounting policy. But when the portfolio began experiencing mounting losses in early 2012, Martin-Artajo and Grout schemed to deliberately mismark hundreds of positions by maximizing their value instead of marking them at the mid-market prices that would reveal the losses. Their mismarking scheme caused JPMorgan’s reported first quarter income before income tax expense to be overstated by $660 million…