"Under assault", JPMorgan's Q4 profit falls 6.6%

New York

JPMORGAN Chase & Co, the biggest US bank by assets, reported a 6.6 per cent drop in quarterly profit as legal costs exceeded US$1 billion in the wake of government probes, leading chief executive Jamie Dimon to claim that banks were "under assault".

JPMorgan agreed in November to pay US$1 billion in penalties over its conduct in foreign exchange markets. Investigations into that and other areas of the bank's business, including alleged manipulation of Libor interest rates, are continuing. "Banks are under assault," Mr Dimon said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. "We have five or six regulators coming at us on every issue." "Obviously companies make mistakes. We try to resolve it, we try to fix it, we admit it."