JPMorgan Made a Million-Dollar Typo

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) may be left to rue a million-dollar typo. A Swiss trader has sued the investment bank in a London court, saying he accepted a job contract that promised to pay him 10 times more than what was actually offered.

According to Kai Herbert, the contract he received read that his annual pay would be 24 million rand ($3.1 million). The bank says it meant to pay him only 2.4 million rand, and the letter had a decimal-point typographical mistake. “That must have been the moment your heart sank,” Judge Henry Globe said to Herbert during the trial.

Herbert is suing the bank for 580,000 pounds ($920,000).

Herbert, a former currency trader with UBS (NYSE:UBS), agreed to move to Johannesburg for the JPMorgan offer. However, he never joined after discovering the mistake, and the bank took its job offer back in December 2010. He then joined Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), but just ten months into the job, was one of several bankers laid off in November.

“How can you possibly suggest that they would pay you so much money for an executive director level job?” a JPMorgan lawyer asked during case proceedings. Way to rub salt in the wound.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aabha Rathee at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com