JPMORGAN CHASE WHALE TRADES: A CASE HISTORY OF DERIVATIVES RISKS AND ABUSES

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Mr. Martin-Artajo: “No, no, no, you know I think that you’re an honest guy. … I did
not want you to do this way, but you know you feel that the bidoffer spreads are giving
you a headache, and you want to release it this way, which is your own way of doing it.
... ”
Mr. Iksil: “The thing is you know today, I said I told Julien you know okay let’s try to
frame this P&L estimate whatever it’s going to be, right?, So that, with tomorrow,
whatever the decision made, right, whether we settle or we decide to fight, you know
like we go long and then we are going to defend the position on IG, on 9, on High Yield,
you know, try to to do the minimum size everywhere you know so that the book grows a
little bit but not too much, so that we are you know we, we maintain knowledge the level
where we are, and we aren’t too far off. I thought that tomorrow, at one stage, after or
before at one stage later, I would show you, you know what, what the plan can be, where,
how many basis points here and there we are chasing, and what size we can expect to
do, right? And I realized we were, we were, we had to get closer to where the market is,
even if the market is wrong, you see? …”
Mr. Martin-Artajo: “Ok, Bruno, no, no, no,. it’s fine, ok, I see what you’re going
through. … [W]e’ll sit down tomorrow and we’ll look at the spreadsheet. I’m sure
you’ve done some numbers that make sense, and you think this is part of something you
can’t recover, therefore you’ve released, and, you know, I know what you’re doing and
you’re signaling here that there is a problem. I’ve already said it, Achilles knows it, and
Ina knows it, and you’re saying it now, so ok. I truly don’t have a lot to say now because
we have so much to speak tomorrow, I mean, We have a long day tomorrow.” 709
The next day, on March 21, 2012, Mr. Martin-Artajo sent an email to Ms. Drew, Mr.
Macris, and Irvin Goldman, then the CIO’s Chief Risk Officer, confirming that the purpose of
the meeting to take place later that day was to discuss issues related to the Synthetic Credit
Portfolio’s “underperformance” and Risk Weighted Assets (RWA). 710 The meeting on March 21
took place, as confirmed in an email the next day from Ms. Drew to Mr. Martin-Artajo and Mr.
Macris in which she described the meeting as “exhaustive.” 711
When asked about the March 20 SCP P&L report, Ms. Drew told the Subcommittee that,
while she routinely received the CIO’s daily EOD P&L emails and was meeting the next day to
discuss the SCP, she did not open or read that particular email. When shown the text, Ms. Drew
told the Subcommittee that she interpreted it as disclosing potential SCP losses and said, had she
seen the $800 million figure at the time, it would have been a “game changer” in how she viewed
the SCP book. 712
A week after her interview, Ms. Drew’s legal counsel contacted the
709
Id. at 398-399.
710
See 3/21/2012 email from Javier Martin-Artajo, CIO, to Ina Drew, CIO, with copies to Achilles Macris, CIO, and
Irvin Goldman, CIO, “Synthetic Book,” JPM-CIO 0003489-490 (“The fact that the increase that we have seen in the
book has not materialized in our performance has raised the following issues : 1. Our current underperformance in
the Synthetic Book is large compared to our estimates given the changes in the profile of the book .”).
711
See 3/22/2012 email from Ina Drew, CIO, to Achilles Macris and Javier Martin-Artajo, CIO, “I was confused by
the inc[re]ased position noted today after yesterday’s exhaustive meeting,” JPM-CIO 0003492.
712
Subcommittee interview of Ina Drew, CIO (12/11/2012). See also March 2012 presentation, CIO Synthetic
Credit Update, JPM-CIO-PSI 0021953-974, at 970 (“the realistic P&L miss is rather 800M USD”).