JPMorgan Metals Division Head of Metals Christian Schirmeister quits
Executive summary
Christian Schirmeister — a four-decade metals trading veteran who began his career at Metallgesellschaft in 1979 — left J.P. Morgan in 2015, after the bank’s metals division had passed through a series of owners and restructurings (MG/Enron/Sempra/RBS → J.P. Morgan) during his long tenure [1] [2]. Subsequent public controversies that engulfed J.P. Morgan’s metals desk years later involved other traders and prosecutors’ actions; available reporting does not link Schirmeister’s 2015 departure to those later criminal probes [3] [4].
1. The exit: dates, role and institutional lineage
Reporting establishes that Schirmeister left J.P. Morgan in 2015 after decades at the desk, having navigated the unit’s evolution from Metallgesellschaft to Enron Metals, Sempra, RBS Sempra and finally J.P. Morgan when RBS sold the business amid the financial crisis [1] [2]. Reuters’ 2015 notice calls him “one of the last members standing” of the Metallgesellschaft era and records his departure in that year [1], a fact Reuters reconfirmed in a 2020 profile of his planned retirement that notes “he left in 2015” [2].
2. Who Schirmeister is: a career summary, post‑J.P. Morgan roles
Schirmeister’s biography in Reuters traces a continuous metals-sales and trading career beginning in 1979 and highlights later roles after leaving J.P. Morgan: a senior consultancy stint at the London Metal Exchange from September 2015 to April 2016, chairmanship of the LME’s copper committee (dating back to 2008), and a return to trading at Amalgamated Metal Trading in May 2016 [2]. Those items are presented as career moves and are reported without alleging regulatory or criminal taint [2].
3. Why context matters: later J.P. Morgan metals scandals are separate in time and personnel
High‑profile legal and regulatory actions that hit J.P. Morgan’s precious‑metals business — including guilty pleas for spoofing by former traders and later racketeering charges against other desk executives — occurred in 2019 and after, and involve different individuals such as Christian Trunz, John Edmonds, Michael Nowak and others [3] [4] [5]. Reuters and other outlets documented pleas and resignations in 2019 and subsequent criminal probes and trials; these accounts do not implicate Schirmeister and are centered on conduct and personnel active at the firm later than 2015 [3] [4] [6] [7].
4. What reporting says — and what it does not
Primary sources used here (Reuters profiles and follow‑up pieces) explicitly state Schirmeister left J.P. Morgan in 2015 and track his later LME consulting and trading return, but none of the cited coverage connects his exit to later spoofing investigations or to allegations that later consumed the desk [1] [2] [3]. Available material therefore supports the straightforward claim that Schirmeister quit/left in 2015, while also showing that much of the metals desk turmoil and prosecutions unfolded years after his departure and involved different personnel [3] [4] [7].
5. Alternative readings and implicit agendas in coverage
A natural tendency in later coverage — driven by dramatic criminal charges and large enforcement settlements — is to retroactively associate any past leadership changes with present scandals; Reuters’ careful chronology avoids that implication by recording Schirmeister’s 2015 exit as a separate personnel event [1] [2]. Observers skeptical of the bank might still infer cultural continuity, while defenders can point to the temporal separation and distinct names in enforcement filings; the reporting cited here enables both readings but offers no affirmative evidence tying Schirmeister to the later criminal allegations [3] [4].
6. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
The firm public record in Reuters and related reporting shows Christian Schirmeister left J.P. Morgan in 2015 after a long career and then held LME and trading roles, and it documents later J.P. Morgan metals prosecutions that involve different traders; no source in the supplied reporting links Schirmeister’s departure to those investigations or alleges misconduct by him [1] [2] [3] [4]. If further documentary proof — internal memos, regulatory filings tying him to later probes, or contemporaneous explanations for his 2015 exit — exists, it was not present in the provided reporting and cannot be asserted here.