Under Daniel Zelikow, global head of its international public sector group, JPMorgan has been integral to helping to keep the lights on at central banks and governments across the world.
“In the early part of the Covid-19 crisis, there was general market volatility and a loss of liquidity,” says Zelikow. “As a big provider of liquidity to securities markets, we helped central banks remain liquid in US dollars.” This in turn enabled those central banks to provide dollar liquidity to their domestic financial systems.
With its huge balance sheet ensuring abundant capital and liquid assets, JPMorgan was able to maintain big inventories of securities and offer better pricing than others. Zelikow reports a huge uptick in its provisioning to central banks and other official institutions.
“We believe our market share increased sharply in the initial quantitative easing period and, if anything, rose more in Europe than it did with dollar area central banks,” he says.
As important as its role in maintaining global liquidity was JPMorgan’s part in helping governments meet escalating funding needs.
“The