FCA: JP Morgan's failings 'extremely serious'

When the scale of the problems at JPMorgan became apparent, it sent a shock-wave through the markets. Maintaining the integrity of markets is a key part of our wholesale conduct agenda. We consider JPMorgan’s failings to be extremely serious such as to undermine the trust and confidence in UK financial markets.

This is yet another example of a firm failing to get a proper grip on the risks its business poses to the market. There were basic failings in the operation of fundamental controls over a high risk part of the business.

Senior management failed to respond properly to warning signals that there were problems in the CIO. As things began to go wrong, the firm didn’t wake up quickly enough to the size and the scale of the problems. What is worse, they compounded this by failing to be open and co-operative with us as their regulator.

Firms must learn the lessons from this incident and ensure that they have business practices, values and culture to control the risks in their businesses.