SEC reviews JPMorgan’s filings after $2B loss

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are reviewing what JPMorgan Chase told investors about its finances and the risks it took weeks before suffering a multibillion-dollar trading loss.

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday that the agency is examining JPMorgan’s earnings statements and first-quarter financial reports to determine if they were “accurate and truthful.”

Schapiro and Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the $2 billion-plus loss at JPMorgan should be a lesson for regulators to tighten rules mandated under the 2010 financial overhaul.

“It would be wrong for us not to take this example,” Schapiro said. JPMorgan is the biggest U.S. bank by assets and the only major U.S. bank to stay profitable during the 2008 financial crisis.

Most Republican lawmakers voted against the financial overhaul. They say it won’t prevent another financial crisis. And the worry that it will drive business overseas.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the panel, questioned why Schapiro and Gensler weren’t aware of what was happening at JPMorgan.