Finance

JPMorgan Chase shares drop 7% after bank tempers guidance on interest income and expenses

Published

9 months ago

September 10, 2024

Daniel Pinto, president and chief operating officer of JPMorgan Chase, speaks during the Semafor 2024 World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, on April 18, 2024.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase shares fell 7% Tuesday after the bank’s president told analysts that expectations for net interest income and expenses in 2025 were too optimistic.

While the bank expects to be in the “ballpark” of the 2024 target for NII of about $91.5 billion, the current estimate for next year of about $90 billion “is not very reasonable” because the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, JPMorgan president Daniel Pinto said at a financial conference.

“I think that that number will be lower,” Pinto said. He declined to give a specific figure.

The stock move was the New York-based bank’s worst drop since June 2020, according to FactSet.

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, has been a winner among lenders in recent years, benefiting from better-than-expected growth in NII as the bank gathered more deposits and made more loans than expected. But skittish investors are now concerned about the outlook for a bellwether banking stock, along with broader concerns about slowing U.S. economic growth.

NII, one of the main ways banks make money, is the difference in the cost of a bank’s deposits and what it earns by lending money or investing it in securities. When interest rates decline, new loans made by the bank and new bonds it purchases will yield less.

Falling rates can help banks in the sense that customers will slow the rotation out of checking accounts and into higher-yielding instruments like CDs or money market funds. But they also make new assets lower yielding, which complicates the picture.

“Clearly, as rates go lower, you have less pressure on repricing of deposits,” Pinto said. “But as you know, we are quite asset sensitive.”

When it comes to expenses, the analyst estimate for next year of roughly $94 billion “is also a bit too optimistic” because of lingering inflation and new investments the firm is making, Pinto said.

“There are a bunch of components that tell us that probably the number on expenses will be a bit higher than what is expected at the moment,” Pinto said.

When it comes to trading, JPMorgan said it expects third-quarter revenue to be flat to up about 2% from a year ago, while investment banking fees are headed for a 15% jump.

The trading slowdown tracks with Goldman Sachs, which said Monday that trading revenue for the quarter was headed for a 10% drop because of a tough year-over-year comparison and difficult trading conditions in August.

Finance

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Published

2 days ago

June 6, 2025

Business Finance News

Finance

Swiss government proposes tough new capital rules in major blow to UBS

Published

2 days ago

June 6, 2025

Business Finance News

A sign in German that reads “part of the UBS group” in Basel on May 5, 2025.

Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

The Swiss government on Friday proposed strict new capital rules that would require banking giant UBS to hold an additional $26 billion in core capital, following its 2023 takeover of stricken rival Credit Suisse.

The measures would also mean that UBS will need to fully capitalize its foreign units and carry out fewer share buybacks.

“The rise in the going-concern requirement needs to be met with up to USD 26 billion of CET1 capital, to allow the AT1 bond holdings to be reduced by around USD 8 billion,” the government said in a Friday statement, referring to UBS’ holding of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds.

The Swiss National Bank said it supported the measures from the government as they will “significantly strengthen” UBS’ resilience.

“As well as reducing the likelihood of a large systemically important bank such as UBS getting into financial distress, this measure also increases a bank’s room for manoeuvre to stabilise itself in a crisis through its own efforts. This makes it less likely that UBS has to be bailed out by the government in the event of a crisis,” SNB said in a Friday statement.

‘Too big to fail’

UBS has been battling the specter of tighter capital rules since acquiring the country’s second-largest bank at a cut-price following years of strategic errors, mismanagement and scandals at Credit Suisse.

The shock demise of the banking giant also brought Swiss financial regulator FINMA under fire for its perceived scarce supervision of the bank and the ultimate timing of its intervention.

Swiss regulators argue that UBS must have stronger capital requirements to safeguard the national economy and financial system, given the bank’s balance topped $1.7 trillion in 2023, roughly double the projected Swiss economic output of last year. UBS insists it is not “too big to fail” and that the additional capital requirements — set to drain its cash liquidity — will impact the bank’s competitiveness.

At the heart of the standoff are pressing concerns over UBS’ ability to buffer any prospective losses at its foreign units, where it has, until now, had the duty to back 60% of capital with capital at the parent bank.

Higher capital requirements can whittle down a bank’s balance sheet and credit supply by bolstering a lender’s funding costs and choking off their willingness to lend — as well as waning their appetite for risk. For shareholders, of note will be the potential impact on discretionary funds available for distribution, including dividends, share buybacks and bonus payments.

“While winding down Credit Suisse’s legacy businesses should free up capital and reduce costs for UBS, much of these gains could be absorbed by stricter regulatory demands,” Johann Scholtz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a note preceding the FINMA announcement.

“Such measures may place UBS’s capital requirements well above those faced by rivals in the United States, putting pressure on returns and reducing prospects for narrowing its long-term valuation gap. Even its long-standing premium rating relative to the European banking sector has recently evaporated.”