Three JP Morgan Formers Fired For Communicating On Personal Devices Have All Found New Jobs On Wall Street

Three executives that were ousted from J.P. Morgan for using their personal phones to communicate work information have landed new jobs in the industry. The news serves as a positive beacon for the rest of Wall Street, who were collectively nervous about an ongoing U.S. regulator probe into the practice.

Bloomberg called the phone rule “a rule that just about everyone seemed to be breaking”. 

Despite J.P. Morgan paying $200 million in fines for the practice, Ben Sykes, an executive director who left last year wound up finding a new job at Jefferies. Earl Dowling, a former managing director landed at PJT Partners and Ed Koo, another JP Morgan executive that was ousted, is now a portfolio manager at Brean Asset Management, according to Bloomberg. 

Sykes FINRA BrokerCheck record reads that he was “terminated for violating the firm’s communication policy by moving several internal business communications from a surveilled approved electronic communication channel to an unapproved electronic communication channel, and for the inappropriate content of certain communications.”

Koo’s says he “used a third-party social media application for internal business communications.”

Meanwhile, the Federal probe into the rule breaking has expanded “to examine whether more firms broke recordkeeping requirements designed to protect investors”, the report says. The investigation has already yielded managers who were supposed to help preventing texting outside of official channels,  but instead engaged  in the practice themselves. 

Adam Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan, commented: “These people were able to find alternative employment because presumably they have skills and are good at what they’re able to do.”

He continued: “JPMorgan probably had to fire some people to show that they were serious. So you can see how a subsequent employer would say, ‘Yeah, that’s a regulatory violation, but you weren’t stealing from your customers.’”

The SEC has also recently accused JP Morgan of failing to meet its obligation to archive written communications, which has been required since the 1930’s. It did not, however, accuse the investment bank of using unauthorized platforms to cheat clients or engage in wrongdoing. 

The bank has since settled with the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.