JPM Is #1

Duff McDonald writes in Portfolio:

Goldman used to be special. Now, Goldman is merely a far smaller bank than J.P. Morgan. Sure, their results beat analyst expectations by nearly double in April. But their revenues only rose 13 percent. J.P. Morgan’s top line gain? A cool 48 percent. More to the point, J.P. Morgan’s investment bank brought in $1.4 billion in revenue in the quarter, tops on Wall Street.
Goldman had, for a time, the most badass leader on Wall Street in Hank Paulson. But Paulson is long gone.
Beyond generally seeming mealy-mouthed, the company’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, has of late been styling himself a little like Jamie Dimon, in particular in his late-to-the-game calls for compensation reform among the country’s most overpaid paper-pushers.
But Dimon actually exudes real confidence instead of merely putting it on as a public-relations costume. Goldman’s co-president, Jon Winkelreid, recently resigned in the wake of a bailout by his company because he was somehow—and this is really just extraordinary—insolvent. This despite being paid more than $100 million over the past decade.

As I asked recently, why isn’t JPM now too big to fail? All those same arguments apply.

Posted by on April 24th, 2009 at 12:06 pm


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