Dimon Kicks Off Wall Street Pressure on Global Competitiveness
March 30, 2011, 6:58 AM EDTBy Dawn Kopecki
March 30 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, whose bank avoided losses in the financial crisis, is helping Wall Street turn up pressure on the Obama administration to keep U.S. regulations competitive with the rest of the world.
Dimon, 55, is the keynote speaker today at a conference on global capital markets competitiveness hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Elizabeth Warren, charged with setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Caterpillar Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Douglas R. Oberhelman are among those scheduled to speak.
“If America adopts a lot of things very different than the rest of the world,” U.S. competitiveness will be damaged, Dimon told investors at a Feb. 15 meeting at JPMorgan’s New York headquarters. JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO said forcing banks to spin off some derivatives business is “absurd” and other changes in last year’s Dodd-Frank Act are a “terrible shame.”
President Barack Obama, who once called Dimon a “savvy” businessman and defended his $17 million bonus for 2009, has tried to forge a better relationship with business leaders after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November’s elections.
The Chamber of Commerce has charged that Obama cost the U.S. economy jobs while pursuing health-care and climate legislation. The organization spent more than $30 million on the 2010 congressional elections, mostly to back Republicans. The chamber represents companies such as Caterpillar, the world’s largest bulldozer maker, and Lockheed Martin Corp.
‘I Get It’
“I understand that you’re under incredible pressure to cut costs and keep your margins up,” Obama said in an address to the chamber in February. “I understand the significance of your obligations to your shareholders. I get it.”
New rules governing the types of investments banks can make and restrictions on derivatives transactions may put U.S. companies at a disadvantage to firms based abroad that aren’t as tightly regulated, Dimon told investors.
“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure that, not just Jamie Dimon, but the whole banking industry is putting on the administration to try to scale back Dodd-Frank as much as possible,” said Paul Miller, a former examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and analyst with FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia.
Dimon, who is speaking over lunch, told investors last month that India, China, Japan and South Korea don’t have the same restrictions on financial firms that are found in the U.S.
“And Singapore is licking its chops, hoping that a lot of the business goes over there,” Dimon said. “I hope American policy makers are very careful about putting American companies at a disadvantage over time.”
--Editors: Dan Reichl, Peter Eichenbaum
To contact the reporter on this story: Dawn Kopecki in Washington at dkopecki@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net
