Jamie Dimon, speaking to a group of business people at the Salt Lake Country Club, said a number of banks will use mergers as a way to grow in tough economic times.
It doesn't hurt that steep share-price declines have made many banks - including perennial acquisition target Zions Bancorp - cheaper and thus more attractive to buy.
Dimon wouldn't name any possible acquisition candidates for the third-largest U.S. bank, but said, "We're ready. If there's a deal out there that makes business sense, we'll look at it."
What about Bank of America's efforts to acquire beleaguered mortgage lender Countrywide Financial?
"We could have bought Countrywide. But I wouldn't have bought it for zero [dollars]," he joked, adding that JPMorgan Chase didn't even get to the point of doing due diligence on a Countrywide bid.
He said JPMorgan Chase made fewer missteps than many other financial organizations leading up to the subprime lending crisis, in which many borrowers got risky loans they could ill afford, leading to a spike in defaults and foreclosures.
But JPMorgan Chase, like the other major banks, has been affected by the national economic downturn and the decline in housing markets nationwide. Its shares closed Wednesday at $38.74, down from a high of $53.20 last year.
Earlier this week, Diane Merdian, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, cut her price target for the company's stock to $45 from $48, saying the bank faces more costs for bad mortgage credit. But she kept her rating on the stock at ''Market Perform.''
Merdian said JPMorgan Chase, which has a small market share in Utah, has done a good job managing risk but did make some mistakes in home-equity lending. ''Investors will need to be prepared to absorb potential further disappointments in earnings," she said.
Merdian cut her profit estimate for the company for 2008 to $3 per share from $3.50 per share and reduced her first-quarter estimate by 24 cents per share to 60 cents per share.
Merdian's comments echo a Goldman Sachs analyst, who also cut his earnings estimate for the company several days earlier.
lesley@sltrib.com
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* THE ASSOCIATED PRESS contributed to this story.
