JPMorgan: Financial Winners and Losers
(
Updated with final stock price moves
.)
NEW YORK (
) -- Most bank stocks, including
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
and
Wells Fargo
(WFC) - Get Report
, traded lower Friday, continuing the recent slide spurred by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's remarks on the creation of a consumer finance protection agency.
On Thursday, Geithner told Congress that he supports a plan by Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) that would pare back some of the original plan presented by President Obama but would still retain the consumer protection agency despite heavy pressure from banking industry and some lawmakers to eliminate it from the legislation.
Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove argued that the proposed plan raises the possibility that the banking system will now be dominated by government edicts. He said this will lower bank profitability and inhibit industry growth.
"The government is surging into the banking industry under the theory that it better understands banking than the private sector does," Bove wrote in his research note. "The result is likely to be fewer bank services provided at higher prices and ironically lower banking profits. Consumer finance could easily become a set of products banks may not want to provide to large sectors of the population. This will create a number of opportunities for everyone but the banks."
Among bank stocks trading lower Friday,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
slid 2.2% to $16.60,
Goldman Sachs
(GS) - Get Report
sank 1.9% to $179.50, JPMorgan lost 1.6% to finish at $43.65, Wells Fargo fell 0.9% to close at $28.19 and
Morgan Stanley
(MS) - Get Report
was lower by 0.6% at $30.55.
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
shares also finished lower despite reports the bank is making further headway in its efforts to sell off non-core assets.
The Wall Street Journal
reported that Citi is in discussions to sell a portion of its retail banking assets in Portugal with U.K. bank
Barclays
(BCS) - Get Report
, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal would include its credit card portfolio in that country, the
Journal
said.
A deal could come early next week, said the article, which suggested the assets would likely fetch less than $100 million. Citigroup shares relinquished early gains and finished with a loss of 5 cents, or 1.1%, at $4.38.
Bond insurers
MBIA
(MBI) - Get Report
and
Ambac Financial
(ABK)
, which endured choppy trading all week, notched another uninspiring session even as both traded just below the highest levels in 11 months. Ambac shares finished lower flat at $1.74 and MBIA were down 1.6% to close at $7.38.
-- Written by Robert Holmes in New York
.
