Did Jamie Dimon Just Diss the Fed?
By: Jamie Dimon is in charge.
The Federal Reserve was set to announce the results of its stress test on Thursday.
It had the results ready to go, but it planned on holding them until Thursday.
Until, it seems, JPMorgan Chase announced that it was raising its dividend and engaging in a monster buyback earlier this afternoon.
In that announcement, they jumped the gun on the Fed's announcement by saying the buyback and dividend program had been approved by the Fed.
"The Federal Reserve has informed the Firm that it completed its 2012 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (“CCAR”) and that it did not object to the Firm’s proposed capital distributions submitted pursuant to CCAR," JPMorgan said in its announcement.
Very quickly, other banks started announcing or leaking their own results.
And so now, the Fed is releasing the results of the stress tests two days early.
It's still unclear exactly why JPMorgan decided to announce early.
One source has told me that JPMorgan and CEO Dimon believed that the results were going to leak out early and decided they'd rather lead the leaks than follow.
"Jamie didn't want his investors learning about the results in the pages of the press. If this was going to come out, it should come from JPM," the source said.
Wasn't Dimon worried about angering the Fed by pre-empting their announcement?
"Dimon's not worried about the Fed," a person familiar with the matter said.
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