Private Equity News & Analysis

JPMorgan Partners writes off $280m

The bank’s disappointing private equity performance hits profits.

-

JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of investment bank JPMorgan Chase, made private equity gains of $132m in the first quarter of 2001.

In the same period last year, JPMorgan Partners made gains of $654m.

The disappointing private equity performance hit the bank’s overall operating profit, which came to $1.4bn. In the first quarter of last year, its operating profit was $1.9bn.

Overall, JPMorgan Partners made $412m of cash gains. The bank said the gains were mainly down to realisations in the energy and power sector.

But the gains were offset by $280m of unrealised investment losses.

JPMorgan Chase said the losses represented “both evaluation writedowns in the private portfolio and a net decline in the value of the public portfolio”.

In the fourth quarter of 2000, the JPMorgan Partners posted a loss of $92m. Then, it put the results down to “unrealised writedowns, primarily in Nasdaq-listed stocks”.