[ by Melanie Gretchen ] One day before the JPMorgan Chase annual investor conference - set for Tuesday, 2/28 - highly-regarded Wall Street analyst Michael Mayo stirred up some controversy.  Mr. Mayo of Credit Agricole, issued a report entitled, "JPMorgan Chase: Should It Get Broken Up?".  In the report, the analyst detailed benefits to shareholders of Chase operating as individual businesses than as one massive conglomerate.  The report has started people talking and wondering if CEO James Dimon will address the issue at tomorrow's meeting. Should It Get Broken Up?  The Report. "The pieces are worth more than the whole," when it comes to JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank by assets as of 12/31/11.  In fact, a whole lot more - Mr. Mayo says they "are worth one-third more than the current market value (est) based on a sum-of-the-parts analysis."  With this in mind, he recommend that senior bank management consider splitting off businesses that could flourish under separate ownership. Mr. Mayo continues: A split up also makes sense from a regulatory standpoint.  Big banks are subject to “increasingly higher regulatory and capital requirements," while smaller businesses are not, and they're nimbler and subject to less regulatory hoop-jumping.  "Indeed, at what point does the conglomerate discount become so great that it encourages the company to take action?" he wrote.  Some questions for Mr. Dimon to answer at tomorrow's meeting:

• Perhaps the processing business should be sold?
• Maybe there are some branches to get divested in less attractive areas?
• Does JPM need to be this big?

If nothing else, Mr. Mayo has given "chase" with some questions.  It will be interesting to see if and how Mr. Dimon responds to the challenge. For further details, go to [Dealbook, 2/27/12].