JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase & Co., also called JPMorganChase, is an American financial holding company headquartered at 270 Park Avenue in New York City. It offers investment banking, consumer and small business banking, commercial banking, payments processing and asset management under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. At the end of 2025 it held $4.4 trillion in assets.

History of JPMorgan Chase

The firm says its founding dates to 1799, when it began as a water company. After a yellow fever outbreak peaked in New York in 1798, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr proposed a private company to supply clean water to the city’s residents. Burr added a clause to the charter allowing the directors to use excess capital to start a bank, and within six months of securing the charter the Manhattan Company’s directors voted to do so. The Bank of the Manhattan Company was born.

The water business, which laid six miles of wooden pipes in its first year and served 400 homes, shops and businesses, closed in 1842 when the city built its own system. The bank went on and later became a template for other New York banks. In 1930 it bought the pistols used in the 1804 duel between Hamilton and Burr, which the firm still preserves. In 1959, after the merger that created Chase Manhattan, its vice chairman David Rockefeller hired the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar to create a new logo that reflected the bank’s global reach and suited its new 60-story headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

In 1955 the Bank of the Manhattan Company merged with Chase National Bank, then the third largest in the United States, to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. In 2000 Chase Manhattan merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. to form JPMorgan Chase. The firm describes itself as built on more than 1,200 predecessor institutions over 225 years, including J.P. Morgan & Co., Chase Manhattan, Bank One, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Chemical Bank, the First National Bank of Chicago, National Bank of Detroit, Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns and First Republic. The parent company itself is a financial holding company incorporated in Delaware in 1968.

Products and services of JPMorgan Chase

For management reporting, the firm has three business segments: Consumer & Community Banking, Commercial & Investment Bank, and Asset & Wealth Management, with the remaining activities in a Corporate group. The consumer segment serves households and small businesses, while the two wholesale segments serve corporations, institutions, governments and wealthy individuals.

The firm says it serves millions of customers, mostly in the United States, and many of the world’s most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients. Its principal bank subsidiary, JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, has branches in 48 states and Washington, D.C. Its main broker-dealer, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, handles securities activity in the United States, and its principal operating subsidiaries outside the country are J.P. Morgan Securities plc in the United Kingdom and J.P. Morgan SE in Germany.

Corporate structure and operations of JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol JPM. In 2025 it reported total net revenue of $182.4 billion and net income of $57.0 billion, compared with $177.6 billion and $58.5 billion in 2024. Diluted earnings per share were $20.02. Total noninterest expense was $95.6 billion, income before income tax expense was $72.6 billion, and income tax expense was $15.5 billion. Provision for credit losses, the amount set aside for expected loan losses, was $14.2 billion.

At the end of 2025 the firm had total assets of $4,424.9 billion, loans of $1,493.4 billion and deposits of $2,559.3 billion, along with total stockholders’ equity of $362.4 billion. It had 318,512 employees, up from 317,233 a year earlier. Credit quality remained stable. Net charge-offs, which are loans the bank has written off as uncollectible after recoveries, were $9.8 billion, a net charge-off rate of 0.74 percent, and allowances for credit losses stood at $31.2 billion. Its common equity tier 1 capital ratio, a regulatory measure of high-quality capital relative to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6 percent under the standardized approach.

The firm has also grown by acquisition, and Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and First Republic all appear among its heritage names. It recorded an estimated bargain purchase gain of $2.8 billion in 2023 related to the First Republic acquisition. A bargain purchase gain arises when the price paid for a business is less than the fair value of what is acquired.

Impact of JPMorgan Chase

As one of the largest banks in the United States, JPMorgan Chase is deeply tied to the wider financial system. Its results move with interest rates, which affect what it earns on loans and pays on deposits, and with decisions by the central bank. It also underwrites and trades bonds for corporate and government clients through its investment bank.

The firm reported higher investment banking fees in 2025, driven by debt underwriting and advisory work in the financial institutions and technology sectors. Its history shows how a single bank charter in 1799 became a model for banking in New York and how successive mergers produced a firm with global reach.

Criticism and legal matters

JPMorgan Chase is party to many investigations and legal proceedings, which it describes in the litigation note of its annual report. One matter involved foreign exchange trading. The firm reports that it reached settlements with government authorities over its foreign exchange sales and trading activities, and in May 2015 it pleaded guilty to a single violation of federal antitrust law.

The Department of Labor granted exemptions that let the firm and its affiliates continue to rely on a federal retirement-plan rule through a ten-year disqualification period that began in January 2017. The firm’s annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, lists its other legal matters.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 4, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue