After weeks of embarrassing disclosures, the Wall Street giant reached a tentative settlement with the convicted sex offender’s victims.
A potential end to a high-profile fight
JPMorgan Chase on Monday reached a tentative settlement with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, weeks after enduring embarrassing disclosures about its longstanding ties to the convicted sex offender.
If approved, the deal would ease some of the pressure on JPMorgan as it defends itself against accusations that it ignored repeated warnings about Mr. Epstein’s crimes. (The bank has denied any wrongdoing.) But the banking giant isn’t completely free from legal entanglements over its 15-year relationship with the deceased financier.
The victims’ lawsuit accused JPMorgan of overlooking red flags about Mr. Epstein, because it valued him as a wealthy client who could help connect the bank with even more deep-pocketed people. (The Times previously reported that bank employees had filed several suspicious-activity reports about Mr. Epstein’s repeated large withdrawals and kept him on as a customer despite flagging him as a “high risk client” in 2006.)
The deal was reached about two weeks after Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s C.E.O., testified about the matter. In a daylong deposition in the case, filed last November in Manhattan federal court, Mr. Dimon said he had barely heard of Mr. Epstein before the financier’s 2019 arrest.
It also comes after Jes Staley, the former JPMorgan executive who had close ties to Mr. Epstein, testified over the weekend in the case. The bank has sued Mr. Staley, seeking to ensure that he can be held liable for any damages the bank ends up paying. (Mr. Staley has denied any wrongdoing.)
But JPMorgan still faces a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands, which contends that the bank should pay damages for letting Mr. Epstein set up a sex trafficking operation on his private island off St. Thomas. The bank has shot back in legal filings that government officials there cozied up to Mr. Epstein for nearly two decades.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
UBS closes its takeover of Credit Suisse. The combination of Switzerland’s two biggest banks, completed on Monday, will create a financial giant with $1.6 trillion in assets and a formidable presence in wealth management. To prevent more of the kinds of scandals that plagued Credit Suisse, UBS has reportedly imposed restrictions on its former rival’s bankers, including a ban on doing business with countries like Libya and Venezuela.
A major British hedge fund scrambles from #MeToo fallout tied to its founder. Odey Asset Management, which oversees $4.4 billion in assets, is said to be weighing limits on investor withdrawals after The Financial Times reported on sexual assault and harassment allegations against its namesake, Crispin Odey. The financier was ousted by his partners on Saturday, but suggested he would fight the move.
Reddit users rebel against the social network. Thousands of message threads on the platform will go dark over the next two days to protest the company’s plan to charge more for access to its fire hose of data. (Several third-party apps have already shut over the changes.) The move is a black eye for Reddit as it prepares to go public as soon as the second half of the year.What could trip up the LIV-PGA deal
Ahead of the U.S. Open golf championship this week, questions hang over the sport. Chief among them: Will the PGA Tour actually merge with its erstwhile rival, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf?
Last week’s stunning announcement came together quickly: a clandestine meeting in Venice between Jay Monahan, commissioner of the tour, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $700 billion sovereign wealth fund, proved decisive. Still, doubts persist that the deal, which has not yet closed, will even happen.
Regulatory questions remain. Since the deal is not an acquisition in the traditional sense, it is not clear whether the tour and LIV will need to file for antitrust regulatory clearance.
