Jamie Dimon Would Welcome Change in Quarterly Earnings Requirement

(Bloomberg) – JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said he would welcome proposed changes that would ease U.S. securities and exchange commission requirements for quarterly earnings reports.

“The bigger issue wasn’t just reporting quarterly,” Dimon said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “They were predictions where CEOs were backed up against a wall. They have to meet these things — earnings — and then they start doing stupid things to meet earnings and that kind of public pressure.”

The largest U.S. bank will update investors quarterly even if it’s no longer necessary, albeit with “a lot less stuff,” Dimon said.

The SEC last month responded to President Donald Trump’s proposal to end quarterly earnings reporting for most companies and promised to give them the option to report on a semi-annual basis. Supporters of the idea say the process is costly and time-intensive, pushing companies to focus on quarterly targets rather than long-term growth. Conversely, advocates of quarterly reporting have praised transparency as helpful to investors.

Dimon called the current requirement “a small part of a much larger problem” where “endless rules” make it difficult for a company to go public.

The longtime CEO has described onerous regulations, lawsuits and other factors as hindering public markets for years, and at one point said he would take JPMorgan private if he could. “Public markets are contracting dramatically, which I do not believe is a good thing,” he wrote in a shareholder letter earlier this year.

-Help from Tom Mackenzie.

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