BOURNEMOUTH’S biggest private sector employer, JP Morgan, has had the most profitable year in the history of banking.

The US-owned global company revealed 26.5billion US dollars in profits in the past 12 months, a record for a US bank.

It made profits of 7billion US dollars in the second quarter of 2017, up 13 per cent year-on-year.

JP Morgan’s commercial banking arm set records in the last quarter, with revenue of 2.1billion dollars (up 15 per cent) and net income of 902million (up 30 per cent).

The figures came as the UK waits to see what will happen to the bank’s British jobs, including 4,000 in Bournemouth, after Brexit.

Despite the results, the bank’s chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon criticised financial journalists for concentrating on trading results instead of the policies which he said were holding back US growth and hurting ordinary Americans.

“It’s almost an embarrassment being an American travelling around the world,” he said.

Mr Dimon, who is thought to have turned down the opportunity to become Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary, told reporters: “Who cares about fixed income trading in the last two weeks of June? … That is the weather. It goes up and down, this and that, and that’s 80 per cent of what you guys focus on.”

He called for reform of US infrastructure and corporate taxes, as well as a focus on better skills and education.

“If we don’t focus on these things, we are hurting average Americans every day,” he said.