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Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan: Trouble on Home Soil, Opportunity

Published: Nov 02, 2010

 Finance       

A Bloomberg Markets cover story on JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon underscores where the market for finance jobs will likely be the warmest in the coming few years: in the BRICs.

That is, in Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Dimon is keen to expand overseas in order to earn back the estimated $1 billion in losses JPMorgan will incur due to Dodd-Frank regulations curtailing derivatives trading. He's also keen to battle with Citi overseas. As Bloomberg points out, "Just a quarter of JPMorgan's total revenue comes from outside the U.S., compared with more than half for Citigroup." However, international business accounted for "61.6 percent of JPMorgan's net income in 2009."

Given that Brazil, Russia, India and China "offer much better economic prospects than the U.S. or Western Europe," you can bet that Dimon will be heading to the BRICs as soon as he can. The only things stopping him now are those pesky $75 billion in nonperforming WaMu loans as well as "an avalanche of litigation over allegedly predatory and fraudulent WaMu mortgages" -- JPMorgan has "set aside a total of $3.5 billion in reserves to cover the cost of mounting lawsuits."

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