Bond insurer Ambac Financial Group Inc said JPMorgan Chase & Co will pay $995 million to settle disputes related to residential mortgage-backed securities.
The settlement will have a positive impact on Ambac’s fourth-quarter operating results and its claims paying resources, Chief Executive Nader Tavakoli said in a statement.
The settlement comes two weeks after Reuters reported that three of Ambac’s top 10 shareholders were calling on Tavakoli to step down, claiming that he was slow to settle $4 billion in insurance claims and lawsuits against Countrywide Home Loans Inc, Bank of America Corp and JPMorgan.
Ambac has publicly resisted calls to speed up its payment of insurance claims, citing concerns that it wouldn’t be able to meet its liabilities that extend out to 2054.
The agreement will not have a material effect on JPMorgan’s first quarter earnings, the Wall Street bank said in a regulatory filing.
The settlement also provides for the withdrawal of Ambac’s objection to JPMorgan’s $4.5 billion settlement with trustees of trusts issued by JPMorgan, Chase and Bear Stearns.
The resolution underscores how Wall Street is yet to shake off the legacy of the U.S. subprime crisis, when mortgages were sold to people who could not afford them and then repackaged for investors without an adequate explanation of how risky they were.
Ambac sued Bank of America Corp in 2014 to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars of losses from insuring securities backed at least in part by risky mortgages from the bank’s Countrywide Home Loans unit.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc said earlier this month that it would pay regulators over $5 billion to settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.