2013年摩根大通到底盈利几何

    过去的一年中，如果对摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的了解只限于一、二条重大新闻，那你可能会认为这家美国最大的银行遇到了难关。

    其实并不尽然。周二，这家银行披露，它2013年实现利润近180亿美元。这比牙买加全国的GDP还要高30亿美元左右。因此可以说，吉米•戴蒙，你干得漂亮。

    2013年的成绩很好，只是利润低于2012年的210亿美元。不过，2013年的业绩中包含了摩根大通用于了结诉讼的全部开销，其中大部分官司都源自5年多以前的出现的问题。也就是说，如果剔除这部分支出，这家银行的利润水平实际上要好很多很多。

    问题在于，诉讼费用并不是摩根大通唯一的非经营性损益。

    那么2013年这家银行的利润到底有多少呢？人们在努力寻找这个答案的过程中会发现银行的财务报表是多么的扑朔迷离。我们所有人都应该对此感到担心。如果不认真探究，就无从掌握一家银行的经营业绩，也无法判断它是否处于困境之中；要是连这些情况都掌握不了，我们又怎么判断危机是不是即将来临呢？这方面实在是障碍重重。不过，我尽了最大努力来拨开重重迷雾，结果表明，摩根大通在这一年里表现良好。虽然和2012年相比没有大幅度改善，但要好于这家银行财务数据所体现的水平。

    一年多一点儿之前，我曾对摩根大通的业绩进行过类似的分析，目的是弄清楚它怎样通过一系列做账手法让60亿美元的交易损失消失于无形。鉴于2013年出现了巨额诉讼费用和大量利润，我认为值得再次进行这样的分析。但这次我得到的结论和一年前正好相反。

    我着手的地方是它180亿美元的全年利润。要计算摩根大通的实际利润，最简单的办法应该是用这个数字加上法院判处的220亿美元罚款。但这样做行不通。因为2013年摩根大通并没有缴纳全部罚款，至少从账面上看是这样。各家银行一直在积累诉讼准备金，也在不断地使用这些准备金。因此，2013年还没有到来时摩根大通就已经支付了一部分罚款，并将它纳入了自己的损益表。

    在这220亿美元罚款中，2013年缴纳的约有一半。但这还不是问题的全部。诉讼费用会降低利润，因此通常来说会让摩根大通在税收方面受益，从而抵消一部分成本。正常情况下，鉴于摩根大通的平均税率约为28%，剔除诉讼成本并考虑到税收因素后，我们可以在它的全年利润上加上80亿美元。

    2013年，摩根大通支付了约90亿美元的罚款及和解费。但作为处罚的一部分，摩根大通同意这笔开支不享受税收减免。但在缴纳这些款项之前，这家银行就已经把它纳入了财报。而且在做账时，摩根大通以为这笔费用可以抵税。因此，按2013年110亿美元的诉讼支出计算，它的抵税额将减少5亿美元。这样，它的税后诉讼成本约为85亿美元。180亿美元的账面利润再加上这笔成本，摩根大通的2013年利润将达到265亿美元。

    If you caught only a headline or two about JPMorgan Chase in the past year, you probably came away thinking the nation's largest bank had hit a rough patch.

    Not so much. On Tuesday, JPMorgan (JPM) said it earned nearly $18 billion in 2013. That's about $3 billion more than the GDP of Jamaica. So yeah, (Jamie Di) Mon.

    Nice year, but down from the $21 billion it made the year before. Still, 2013's financials include all the money that JPMorgan had to spend to settle its legal battles, much of which are related to events that took place more than five years ago. The implication is that if you exclude that, bank's bottom line is actually much, much better.

    The problem is legal fees are not the only one-time expense or benefit in JPMorgan's financial statements.

    So what did JPMorgan really make in 2013? Attempting to find that answer shows just how convoluted and opaque bank financial statements can be. That's something all of us should be worried about. How can we know a crisis is coming if we can't tell, without some serious detective work, what a bank made or if it is in trouble? There are simply too many obstacles. But my best attempt at looking behind the curtain tells me that the nation's largest bank had a good year, better than their reported number lets on, though still not much better than 2012.

    I did a similar analysis a little over a year ago to show how JPMorgan's $6 billion trading loss seemingly disappeared behind a number of accounting moves. Given the bank's huge legal fees and massive profits, I thought it was worthwhile to repeat the exercise. This time, though, I came to the opposite conclusion.

    Start with the $18 billion annual profit. The simplest way to get to the bank's actual earnings should be to add back JPMorgan's $22 billion in legal fines. But you can't do that. Not all of those were paid this year, at least in terms of the bank's accounting. Banks build up legal reserves over time and expense them as they go along. So, some of this year's legal fines were already paid for on the banks profit and loss statement before 2013 even began.

    Of the $22 billion, about half was paid for in 2013. But we're not there yet. Legal fees lower profits, so typically JPMorgan would get a tax benefit from paying them, offsetting some of the cost. Normally, to exclude legal costs, and factor in taxes, we would add back $8 billion, given that JPMorgan's average tax rate is around 28%.

    But as part of the punishment, JPMorgan agreed not to take a tax deduction on about $9 billion of the penalties and settlements it paid last year. But before paying out any of this money, JPMorgan had already expensed that cost on its financial statements. And when it did, it assumed that it would be able to get a tax benefit. That lowers the tax write-off that JPMorgan can take on its $11 billion in legal expenses in 2013 by $500 million, making 2013's post-tax legal costs about $8.5 billion. Add that to the $18 billion JPMorgan reported and you get $26.5 billion in profits for 2013.