Blythe Masters, the head of the commodities business at JPMorgan Chase, has declined an invitation to join an advisory committee of the agency that regulates futures and swaps trading, people briefed on the matter said on Friday.
Ms. Masters had been invited to join the advisory committee by Mark Wetjen, the acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Her name was even added to a list of members on the website for the committee, which advises the agency on global markets and whose members include policy advocates, an academic and a number of financial industry professionals.
JPMorgan is finalizing a sale of its physical commodity business, creating a workload for Ms. Masters that “would make it tough for her to participate†in the markets advisory committee, a person briefed on the matter said. The bank has offered to make another one of its officials available to the regulator, this person said.
Ms. Masters, a powerful Wall Street executive known as a pioneer in the use of credit derivatives, came under regulatory scrutiny last year as the nation’s top energy regulator, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, accused the bank of manipulating energy markets in California.
The agency’s investigators claimed that Ms. Masters made “false and misleading statements†under oath, an accusation that JPMorgan disputed. The bank struck a $410 million settlement with the regulator in July, neither admitting nor denying the accusations of market manipulation.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has five advisory committees, including one on technology and one on agriculture, that meet several times a year.
