JPMorgan to pay $920M in 'London Whale' case

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will pay $920 million and has admitted that it failed to oversee trading that led to a $6-billion loss and renewed worries about serious risk-taking by major banks.

U.S. and U.K. regulators said Thursday that the largest U.S. bank's weak oversight allowed traders in its London office to assign inflated values to transactions and cover up huge losses as they ballooned. Two of the traders are facing criminal charges of falsifying records to hide the losses.

The combined amount JPMorgan is paying three U.S. regulators and the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority adds up to one of the largest fines ever levied against a financial institution.

The Securities and Exchange Commission fined the bank $200 million and required a rare admission of wrongdoing. The Federal Reserve Board imposed a $200-million penalty, while the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency set a $300-million fine.

The British regulator fined the company $220 million.

The SEC said that the breakdown in supervision stretched beyond the trading operations to the bank's top executives.

Manhattan-based JPMorgan called the settlements "a major step" in its efforts to put its legal problems behind it.

"We have accepted responsibility and acknowledged our mistakes from the start, and we have learned from them and worked to fix them," JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said in a statement.-- AP