Banks, J.P. Morgan | featured news

Sometimes, the big banks can hear their customers. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has decided that it won't charge customers who use their debit cards to make purchases.

JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America Corp were hit with new lawsuits by investors seeking to recover losses on $4.5 billion of soured mortgage debt, expanding the litigation targeting the two largest U.S. banks.

Bank of America Corp and JPMorgan Chase & Co have started modifying tens of thousands of mortgages where the banks deem the loans especially risky, even if the borrowers have not asked, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has pushed out its head of home lending, David Lowman, who was sidelined in February after the bank racked up billions of dollars in losses on soured mortgages and became mired in litigation over a wave of foreclosures.

A group of investors in bankrupt Tribune Co sued JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Citicorp and Bank of America, claiming the banks arranged $3.7 billion in loans in 2007 they knew the company could never repay.

JPMorgan Chase reported a $3.3 billion profit for the first quarter Wednesday, even as its results were tempered by ongoing losses in consumer loan portfolios.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon pulled in a roughly $17 million bonus in restricted stock and options for 2009, making him one of the best-paid banking chiefs around.

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system. Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.

JPMorgan Chase becomes the second major US bank to report a big rise in profits for the April to June period.

The $2.1 billion profit in the first quarter could give investors hope that the banking stocks have reached a bottom.