JP Morgan Chase Snubs Their own Investments - and Investors

Would you buy 14,000,000 shares in stock of a company you don't believe in?

That's apparently what JP Morgan Chase has done. Despite owning that amount of shares in the web browser Opera (approximately 14% of the company), they issued a release last week that warned their customers they would block customer access to Opera and Chrome for reasons of security/standards compliance.

I find browser wars a pretty tedious subject, but this strange tech news is interesting not only for its potential impact on e-com (Chase's customer base is so large that Chrome and Opera could lose users over this), and even more for the black humor of its subtext. 

The idea that a financial institution would invest so heavily in a company and then smack it down by issuing a press release trumpeting their lack of confidence in it is a classic portrait of the dysfunction rife in the financial sector.

And it's arrogance. Chase seems to project a cavalier confidence that if they impulsively make decisions to degrade the bank's user experience, their customers will have to take it and like it. 

Can you imagine this kind of posture with a major multi-channel retailer? Too much competition in that sector. In retail if you don't have top-grade UX some other hungry store comes along and eats your lunch. 

One bizarre thought: what would happen if you performed the (almost impossible) task of following the money? Could be that if you bank with Chase, you might even own a piece of Opera – through the tax dollars you loaned them through the federal bailouts. Do Chase accountholders get to vote in Opera's next board election?

And no, I haven't done any research on the bailout connection. Just saying...