JPMorgan selling $6 billion in preferred shares: report

The JPMorgan Chase & Co building in New York, March 17, 2008.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) is to sell $6 billion in non-cumulative perpetual preferred shares, according to a report in International Financing Review, a Thomson publication.

Pricing could be decided on Wednesday. The shares are expected to pay a fixed 7.9 percent dividend for 10 years and a floating rate after that date.

Several banks and brokerages have turned in recent months to public and private investors for billions of dollars in capital to shore up their balance sheets, hit by the global credit crunch.

The report came on the day that JPMorgan, the third-largest U.S. bank, reported a 50 percent drop in quarterly profit. Still, its results calmed investors, who had hoped the bank would deal with the credit crisis better than some others.

Its profit was $2.37 billion, or 68 cents per share, down from $4.79 billion, or $1.34, in the year-earlier period. Results included a gain of $955 million from a stake in credit card network Visa Inc (V.N), which went public last month.

The New York-based bank set aside $4.42 billion for loan losses and took about $2.6 billion of write-downs tied to mortgages, loans to fund corporate buyouts and tight credit markets. Its total allowance for credit losses rose $2.52 billion from the end of 2007 to $12.6 billion.

(Reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman and Karen Brettell; Editing by Alan Raybould)