JPMorgan Chase plans to lay off 63 Jersey City, New Jersey-based employees, effective Sept. 25, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed Tuesday.
"This impacts a small number of local employees, and we are working hard to redeploy them,” JPMorgan said in a statement seen by Reuters.
JPMorgan has 560 positions open in New Jersey, it told the wire service, adding that the layoffs were part of the bank’s regular review.
“We are building for the long term and will continue to invest in recruiting, training and technology,” the bank said.
Another area in which it seems to be investing is commercial banking — with a particular focus on catering to startups and venture capital-backed companies.
JPMorgan hired John China, a 27-year veteran of Silicon Valley Bank, to co-lead its innovation economy business alongside Melissa Smith, who already serves as head of specialized industries for JPMorgan’s commercial bank.
China had been president of SVB Capital since 2019 and, before that, served as head of technology banking at SVB, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“It’s a very rare thing to have this monopolistic player go away overnight,” Doug Petno, JPMorgan’s CEO of commercial banking, told the Financial Times, referring to SVB. “We are open for business and we believe we can be the end-game winner.”
JPMorgan launched its innovation economy group in 2016, and counts more than 350 bankers and 6,000 clients, the bank said in a release Tuesday.
“Recent market events have only strengthened our commitment to provide the bespoke services and solutions that founders, startups and investors need to thrive,” Smith said in another reference to the crisis of confidence that upended Silicon Valley Bank in March.
But JPMorgan isn’t merely growing its startup-fostering efforts stateside. The bank has hired about 20 bankers to bolster its U.K.-based commercial-banking unit, and added 10 banks in Israel, according to the Financial Times.
“This is about being relevant to the world’s best companies earlier in their life cycle,” Petno told the outlet. “Our onboarding team are kind of maxed out.”
There is offboarding, too. The 63 New Jersey jobs reduced are just the latest figure to surface as the bank reshapes its workforce this year. A source told Bloomberg and Reuters last month that JPMorgan would cut 40 North America-based investment bankers in response to a 40% slump in deal volume across the banking sector.
JPMorgan also notified roughly 1,000 employees of First Republic Bank in May that they would be downsized. JPMorgan acquired the struggling lender after it was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Also in May, JPMorgan had been looking at laying off 500 employees across various departments, Reuters reported.
The bank’s total workforce stood at 296,877 as of March 31, according to a filing. That’s up 8% from 2022’s first quarter.
