BANKING

JPMORGAN CHASE POSTS RECORD QUARTERLY PROFIT

JPMorgan Chase & Company, the third-biggest American bank, reported record quarterly profit as fixed-income trading revenue surged. President James Dimon will take over as chief executive officer six months earlier than planned.

Net income surged 78% to $2.52 billion, or 71 cents a share, from $1.42 billion, or 39 cents, New York-based JPMorgan said in a statement today. Revenue increased 16% to $14.5 billion. The company, which is also Louisiana’s second largest bank, had $248 million in costs stemming from Hurricane Katrina.

JPMorgan’s biggest profit increase since Mr. Dimon joined the company through its $58 billion purchase of Bank One comes amid pressure from investors to improve results and justify the merger. Fixed-income trading revenue more than tripled in the third quarter and JPMorgan benefited from higher demand for investment-banking services that fueled record earnings at Goldman Sachs Group and Merrill Lynch.

“The results were better than we might have thought,” said James Schmidt, who holds JPMorgan shares among the $5 billion he manages at John Hancock Advisors.

Excluding costs from JPMorgan’s July 2004 purchase of Bank One, earnings would have been $2.7 billion, or 75 cents a share. JPMorgan was expected to earn $2.47 billion, or 72 cents, on revenue of $13.8 billion, according to the average estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

– Bloomberg News

EXCHANGES

CBOT STOCK MAKES STRONG DEBUT

Futures exchange CBOT Holdings Incorporated’s stock made a strong debut yesterday, closing 49% above its initial public offering price.

CBOT, the holding company for the Chicago Board of Trade, closed at $80.30 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, well above the $54-a-share price at which it sold 3.19 million shares on Tuesday.

The company’s stock was expected to do well yesterday, considering the slender number of shares available to trade – it only sold 6% of its stock in the IPO – and the lofty price it commanded from investors who piled in to the IPO, pushing the final price above the expected range of $45 to $49 a share set by underwriters Credit Suisse First Boston and JPMorgan Chase & Company. That price range was raised a month earlier from $33 to $36 a share.

– Dow Jones Newswires

IN BRIEF

Gary Lynch joined Morgan Stanley as its top lawyer this week with a stock package worth more than $13 million, according to a regulatory filing … America Online is laying off more than 700 employees, primarily in member-services call centers, in response to the ongoing decline in subscribers for its dial-up Internet-access services. Under the plan, the Time Warner unit is closing its Orlando, Fla., center, which has about 450 employees, and is cutting positions in centers in Jacksonville, Fla., Tucson, Ariz., and at AOL’s Dulles, Va., corporate headquarters.

– Bloomberg News and Dow Jones Newswires