JPMorgan shareholders endorse pay for top executives

(Reuters) - Shareholders of JPMorgan Chase & Co approved 2015 compensation packages for CEO Jamie Dimon and other top executives, and re-elected the bank's board at its annual general meeting on Tuesday.

Nearly 92 percent of votes cast at a shareholders' meeting were in favor of the compensation.

The Wall Street bank raised Dimon's total compensation by 35 percent to $27 million for 2015.

Proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services Inc and Glass, Lewis & Co had recommended that investors vote to approve last year's payouts to executives.

Companies have been required since the financial crisis to hold so-called "say-on-pay" advisory votes.

A group of U.S. regulators issued a proposal in April to restrict incentive-based compensation at big financial companies and prevent executives from receiving outsized rewards for making overly risky gambles.

Big U.S. financial firms have already made significant changes to the way they pay employees since the 2007-2009 crisis, when they were slammed for allowing top executives and money-losing traders to leave with golden parachutes.

A JPMorgan shareholder proposal calling for the board to separate the post of chairman and chief executive, but possibly not until Dimon is CEO, received 32.9 percent of votes cast.

The board had recommended that shareholders vote against the proposal saying it should retain responsibility to determine its leadership structure.

Among other shareholder proposals that were rejected was one calling for a committee to determine whether the bank was "too big to fail" and if it needed to divest non-core businesses.

(Reporting by Sweta Singh and Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Nikhil Subba; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh)

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