Investing December 23, 2015

JP Morgan Settles Securities Case with Public Pension Funds

The lawsuit claimed JP Morgan misled investors about its trading activity, inflating the price of its stock before suffering large trading losses.
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Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced a $150 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit with JP Morgan Chase & Co. over losses incurred by the bank’s investors, including the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.

The suit, filed in July 2012, alleged that JP Morgan Chase issued false and misleading statements regarding its trading activity, which inflated the price of its stock. Then, trading losses incurred by JP Morgan Chase caused the bank’s stock value to plummet resulting in a billion dollars of investor losses. The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) lost approximately $2.5 million as a result of the alleged fraud.

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According to the complaint filed in 2012, when announcing the trading losses, the bank said: “Regarding what happened, the synthetic credit portfolio was a strategy to hedge the firm’s overall credit exposure, which is our largest risk overall in a stressed credit environment. We are reducing that hedge, but in hindsight the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored. The portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile, and less effective as an economic hedge than we thought.”

The settlement class includes all persons who purchased JP Morgan common stock between April 13, 2012, and May 21, 2012. Joining the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System as lead plaintiffs are public pension funds in the states of Oregon and Arkansas, and Swedish pension fund AP7.

Break from the Grind December 22, 2015

At What Temperature Should You Set the Office Thermostat?

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Twenty-three percent of employees surveyed by CareerBuilder say their office is too cold, while 25% say it’s too hot. One in five workers (20%) has argued with a coworker about office temperature, and 18% admit they have secretly changed the temperature in the office during the winter.

Drilled down by gender, 13% of men say they are too cold in the office, while 28% say they are too hot. Thirty-one percent of women are too cold, and 22% too hot. Broken down by industry, information technology has the most comfortable employees, with 70% saying the temperature in their work environment is just right. Forty percent of manufacturing employees say their work environment is too hot, and nearly one-third (32%) of financial services employees are too cold in their offices.

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According to the survey, the temperature of the office space can have a significant impact on the performance of the workforce and their productivity. More than half of employees (53%) said sitting in an office that is too cold has a negative impact on their productivity, while 71% said the same about a warm environment. Women are more likely than men to be negatively affected by both too cold and too warm environments—58% are affected by cold (versus 47% of men) and 74% by hot environments (versus 68% for men).

To keep warm when the office environment is too cold, employees:

  • Dress in layers – 44%;
  • Drink hot beverages – 36%;
  • Wear a jacket all day – 31%;
  • Wear a heavy sweater – 27%;
  • Use a space heater – 15%; and
  • Use a blanket – 7%.

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