JPMorgan urges investors to vote down break-up proposal

Thomson ReutersJP Morgan Chase & Co sign outside headquarters in New York

(Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co urged shareholders on Thursday to vote against appointing a committee to explore a break up of the bank, reiterating that splitting its businesses would not be in investors’ best interests.

According to a regulatory filing, a shareholder, Bartlett Naylor, plans to propose at JPMorgan’s annual general meeting on May 17 that the bank consider splitting into two or more companies. (http://1.usa.gov/1YgB3MQ)

Naylor’s resolution recommends that one company perform basic business and consumer lending, while the other units focus on investment banking operations.

Naylor, who works for the non-profit Public Citizen, has filed nearly identical resolutions at Bank of America , and Citigroup in recent years.

JPMorgan said the formation of a special committee was unnecessary as an extensive review from 2015 had shown splitting off businesses would likely negatively impact shareholder value.

The biggest U.S. bank by assets is one of the world’s 30 globally systemic banks, deemed “too big to fail” by regulators.

Handling risky behavior on Wall Street remains a hot topic at U.S. presidential debates, with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders calling for breakups of big banks and criticizing rival Hillary Clinton for being too close to Wall Street.

Sanders has pledged to create a too-big-to-fail list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies within the first 100 days of his presidential administration and to break up those institutions in the first year.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.