Goldman Sachs says JPMorgan Chase Bank would be worth 25% more if it were split into different units. Goldman wants a complete breakup of the US bank saying the boost in returns from a split would far outweigh the synergies that JPMorgan claims it gets from its current size. In a report, Goldman said JPMorgan could be broken up into four parts. The biggest of the pieces would include the bank’s branch network, which Goldman says could be worth over $100 billion on its own. JPMorgan’s investment bank would be nearly as large, followed by its commercial bank and an asset management company. Goldman says that even splitting JPMorgan in two – dividing the investment bank from the traditional bank, returning the company roughly to what was allowed before the Glass Steagall Act was repealed in the early 2000s – would boost the overall value of the current bank by 16%. Banking reform advocates have long called for the nation’s biggest banks to be broken up. The so-called too big to fail problem has received plenty of attention since the financial crisis.
