JP Morgan Is Still Cleaning Up Its ‘Disastrous’ $175M Frank Acquisition

JP Morgan paid $175 million for a startup it believes it was conned into buying. Now, amid an ongoing legal battle, it’s got to clean up a very public mess.

Last September, days after JP Morgan suspended Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank—a fintech startup it had acquired a year earlier for $175 million—the biggest bank in the country was touting her business to its staff.

For months, JP Morgan had been investigating Javice for troubling issues related to the acquisition of what it had lauded as “the fastest growing college financial planning platform.” The bank would soon sue her for fraud, alleging she had fabricated a list of more than 4 million fake customers to sway it into buying her company. Yet on September 15, as investigators combed through her Frank files, and both sides argued about who’d pay what legal fees, an email promoting an “exclusive” event that Javice was headlining landed in the inbox of tens of thousands of JP Morgan bankers, according to internal materials obtained by Forbes. “Mission: Tuition,” said the memo from JP Morgan Asset Management, offering U.S. employees expert guidance on “navigating financial aid with Frank.”