Like banks around the world, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. was scrambling through the night to deal with frantic trading and panicky markets. So far, though, the surge hasn't led to trading or liquidity problems at the biggest U.S. bank by assets.

At some points, the bank had more than 1,000 tickets per second on its spot foreign-exchange electronic execution platform. And J.P. Morgan traded more than four times its typical amount—north of $60 billion—on its foreign-exchange platform in Asia.

"There were no issues" during the night, said Daniel Pinto, chief executive of J.P. Morgan's corporate and investment bank and head of Europe, Middle East and Africa. "At no point did we have to stop provisioning liquidity to clients."

The bank expects to do three times a typical day's volume in global FX, which will be a record for that business, said Troy Rohrbaugh, J.P. Morgan's head of rates and FX, in an interview from London. "We adjusted for volatility and liquidity, but we didn't cut back."

Liquidity in markets has been a concern for banks and regulators of late, with many saying it has become more constrained. "So therefore you have to assume that some of the market moves we saw last night and this morning are probably magnified by the lower liquidity," Mr. Pinto said.

Given markets' wrong view that the U.K. "Brexit" vote would keep the country in the European Union, many investors may be caught on the losing side of trades. Yet Mr. Pinto said that so far all margin calls required have been met.

J.P. Morgan was on high alert through the night. On the FX team, J.P. Morgan's Asia desk was at full capacity, and it had 50% of its traders working through the night in London (with coffee and Red Bull) and New York (with pizza).

Mr. Pinto said some of J.P. Morgan's top executives had a call at 5 a.m. New York time and that he had been in touch with chief James Dimon several times through the night.

The bank had been preparing for some time for either outcome in the vote. J.P. Morgan ran stress tests in all its markets, focusing on markets and fund flows, in preparation for the decision. It continued running those tests Friday to try and see what may or may not be an issue going forward.

Like other financial firms, J.P. Morgan is still assessing what the Brexit votes means both for its customers and itself. The bank employees around 16,000 people in the U.K. "No doubt London will be an important financial center for the whole world," he said, adding that there isn't full clarity on what banks can do related to certain entities and client-facing activities.

He added for banking products, deposits, capital markets and other matters, there is a wait-and-see period depending on the agreement between Europe and the U.K. regarding legal entity structures. "It is way, way, way too early to start thinking about how many jobs will go from where to where," because there is still expected to be uncertainty for some time, Mr. Pinto said. He added that while banks have modeled all kinds of scenarios, they need clarity from governments before decisions can be taken.

Mr. Pinto said the bank has several branches of its current entities across Europe and other infrastructure already in place, but the main operation is in the U.K. "If that needs to be changed or not time will tell," he said.

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 24, 2016 12:15 ET (16:15 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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