NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase eked out a fourth-quarter profit, but its results were anything but calming to investors worried about the mountain of upcoming losses in the troubled banking sector.
Defaults surged in a wide variety of loans, ranging from home loans to credit cards to commercial real estate loans. JPMorgan’s investment bank was forced to mark down its portfolio by $2.9 billion. And had it not been for JPMorgan’s buy of Washington Mutual late last year, the bank would have reported a net loss for the fourth quarter.
Even chief executive Jamie Dimon called the results “very disappointing.”
JPMorgan Chase on Thursday reported a profit of $702 million, or 7 cents per share, down 76 percent from $2.97 billion, or 86 cents per share, a year ago.
JPMorgan is the first of the big U.S. banks to report results for the fourth quarter. The period was particularly rough for the financial-services industry, leading the U.S. government to lend hundreds of billions of dollars to U.S. banks to get them to lend more. JPMorgan Chase got $25 billion, as did Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., and Citigroup. In December, Citigroup got an extra $20 billion dose of funding.
