JP Morgan's $6 billion Bear Stearns reserve proving to be too low so far

It's more like $9 billion so far, but could end up plus or minus another billion....

JPMorgan Chase is to take a charge of about $9bn – half as much again as its estimate – to clean up Bear Stearns’ balance sheet and pay for redundancies and litigation arising from its cut-price takeover of the stricken investment bank.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and chief executive, told a banking conference organised by UBS that the higher costs were driven by the losses suffered by Bear this year and the larger-than-expected amount of bad assets on its books.

Mr Dimon said he remained optimistic on the long-term benefits of the $1.5bn takeover of Bear but described it as “mission not accomplished”, arguing saying that the success of the deal would have to be judged in future years.

On Monday, Mr Dimon said the $9bn charge, which includes Bear’s most recent losses that were not contained in the original estimate, could end up being up to $1bn higher or lower.

JPMorgan faces $9bn charge for Bear clean-up - Financial Times