JPMorgan executives, but not Dimon, to testify on 'Whale' trade

WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - Current and former top executives of JPMorgan Chase & Co will appear before a Senate panel on Friday to testify about the multi-billion dollar "London Whale" trading loss, but Chief Executive Jamie Dimon will not be a witness.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a witness list for the hearing, which included Ina Drew, the former chief investment officer who ran the London-based group responsible for the $6-billion trading loss.

Douglas Braunstein, the former chief financial officer, and Michael Cavanaugh, the JPMorgan executive who led the internal investigation into the losses, will also testify.

In addition, officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of JPMorgan's primary regulators, will appear.

JPMorgan spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli declined to comment on why Dimon would not be testifying. A spokeswoman for the committee didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dimon, to date, has been front and center in explaining the trading loss. He was criticized for initially dismissing rumors of a troubled trading position as a "tempest in a teapot" during an April conference call. Less than a month later, the bank disclosed problems with the trading strategy, saying it had lost more than $2 billion and that the figure could be worse.

He also testified before the Senate Banking Committee last June, during which he apologized for the trading loss.

The Senate panel, chaired by retiring Democratic Senator Carl Levin, has spent months investigating why JPMorgan top management and regulators did not spot the dangerous and ultimately costly trades in an obscure corner of the credit market.

JPMorgan's losses stemmed from bets by London-based Chief Investment Office trader Bruno Iksil on an index for credit default swaps. His outsized positions earned him the nickname "London Whale" from the hedge fund traders taking the other sides of his positions.

The trading loss returned the spotlight to big banks' risk-taking and raised questions about whether certain banks were effectively too big to manage or to regulate.