The Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co's aggressive push into commodities trading will fall short of revenue goals this year and the business will be re evaluated if it lags again in 2011.

The newspaper said that barring a remarkable turnaround the bank's commodities trading desk, the largest on Wall Street, would not meet targets including a USD 1.78 billion revenue goal because of a string of problems including a bad bet on European coal prices and employee defections. The Journal, citing a person familiar with the situation, said the third quarter improved, with a revenue gain of about USD 154 million through September 30th 2010. But it said commodities revenue was up only by about USD 189 million for the year.

The paper said the unit still trails its two next biggest rivals, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley, in market share despite spending USD 2 billion since 2008 to acquire other firms' trading businesses.

It said the disappointing results have put pressure on the unit's head, Ms Blythe Masters, and that Ms Jes Staley, the head of investment banking at JPMorgan Chase, intends to reevaluate the business with Ms Masters if the unit's business dips below USD 1 billion in revenue next year.

Asked to comment on the story, JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman Ms Kristin Lemkau repeated comments attributed to Staley in the newspaper, saying that Blythe has built this business from the bottom up in only four years and today we have the scale to serve all of our client needs.

(Sourced from www.reuters.com)