JPMorgan chief sets date with Senate

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon will testify before lawmakers on June 13 on how his bank lost billions of dollars on a bad trade.

The Senate Banking Committee announced Thursday that it had finalized the date with the head of the nation’s largest bank, after declaring earlier in the month that it wanted Dimon to come and explain how a complex bet on corporate debt has left the firm with $2 billion in losses and counting.

{mosads}The panel originally wanted Dimon to testify on June 7, but said the revised date was the only one that worked for both parties.

The bank’s botched trade has set off a fresh round of recriminations on Wall Street, and has the potential to undermine industry efforts to push back against strict implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Further exacerbating woes for the financial sector has been the badly handled initial public offering of Facebook stock. The highly anticipated offering of the technology titan stumbled out of the gate, as the stock has lost a quarter of its value since hitting the open market a little over a week ago. In addition, questions have emerged about whether the banks underwriting the deal failed to disseminate information to all investors before the stock opened about reduced revenue expectations for the company, driving yet another round of recriminations and congressional investigations.

The House Financial Services Committee has announced it also plans to look into JPMorgan’s losses, but has not yet called on Dimon to testify before its members.