J.P. Morgan Chase & Co has pushed out its head of home lending, David Lowman, who had been sidelined in February after the bank racked up billions of dollars in losses on mortgages and became mired in litigation over foreclosures. "Dave Lowman and I have decided he will leave the firm," Frank Bisignano, the bank's chief administrative officer, said in a memo that was sent to bank staff on Tuesday.
A copy of the memo was obtained by Reuters. Lowman joined J.P. Morgan from Citigroup in 2006. During his tenure at J.P. Morgan, the bank picked up bad mortgage assets through its acquisitions of investment bank Bear Stearns & Co and retail bank Washington Mutual.
Lowman was pushed aside in February by J.P. Morgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, who assigned his top aide, Bisignano, to the company's retail banking unit to fix its mortgage business.
During Lowman's tenure, the unit was so disorganised that the bank seized homes of at least 33 US military servicemen on active duty, violating federal law and prompting Dimon to apologise at the company's annual shareholder meeting. The bank has said it is forgiving those loans.
Lowman could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. Lowman appeared before congressional committees last year where he was chastised for his division's refusal to cooperate with borrowers and modify mortgages. Lowman said in a June 2010 hearing that the bank was understaffed, but was adding employees to work on problematic mortgages.
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