Top JPMorgan bankers hosting Romney fund-raiser

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney smiles during a South Carolina Republican party presidential debate in Spartanburg, South Carolina November 12, 2011.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jimmy Lee, a veteran Wall Street investment banker, and three other top executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co are hosting a $2,500-per-person reception for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in two weeks.

Lee, in an e-mail invitation sent on Monday, said he has known Romney for almost all of his Wall Street career and that he made one of the first loans to Romney at Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity and leveraged buyout firm.

"I am committed to doing all that I can to help his campaign because I also believe he is the strongest challenger to President Obama," Lee wrote in the e-mail.

The other JPMorgan executives named on the invitation are Frank Bisignano, a top-aide and trouble-shooter to Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, asset management chief Mary Callahan Erdoes, and Mel Martinez, a former senator from Florida who is a senior executive representing the bank in Florida, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Another Wall Street veteran, Stephen Schwarzmann, co-founder of private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, is planning a separate fund-raiser for Romney in December, according to a source familiar with the event.

JPMorgan's Dimon is a Democrat. As a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Dimon is not allowed to raise funds for candidates, said Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for the bank.

The JPMorgan executives were not immediately available for a comment, Evangelisti said.

The reception is to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York on December 14 at 1:45 p.m., according to the invitation.

(Reporting by David Henry and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; editing by Andre Grenon)