Dimon recovering after heart surgery
NEW YORK • Jpmorgan Chase & Co. chief executive and chairman Jamie Dimon is recovering from emergency heart surgery done on Thursday morning, with two deputies taking over as he recuperates, the largest U.S. bank said.
Dimon, 63, experienced a tear in his heart’s main artery, which was detected early and treated successfully, JPMORgan said, publicly releasing an internal memo.
He is “awake, alert and recovering well,” according to the memo. The bank did not disclose where Dimon is being treated.
Dimon told senior colleagues he “feels really good” after undergoing emergency heart surgery, and his doctors are “happy” with his recovery so far, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
The sources said Dimon was expected to fully recover from the surgery, which took place on Thursday and was needed to treat an acute aortic dissection, a condition where the inner lining of the aorta has torn away from the outside wall.
The bank’s co- presidents and co- chief operating officers, Daniel Pinto and Gordon Smith, sent the message to all employees, and are running Jpmorgan as Dimon recovers.
Dimon has been CEO of Jpmorgan for over a decade, and is a larger-than-life figure on Wall Street.
He has fashioned himself into a voice of the industry and become more active in Washington in recent years. He often uses his platform as head of the country’s biggest bank to opine on issues that fall outside that scope, including immigration, education and health care.
At various times, Dimon has also mocked financial regulators, cursed during public appearances and joked about becoming U. S. president.
During his time at the helm of Jpmorgan, Dimon has turned the bank into a global behemoth, with leading positions in many key businesses, through crisis-era acquisitions as well as opportunistic market-share grabs.
His most vulnerable time as CEO may have come after a trader known as “the London Whale” caused billions of dollars’ worth of losses from derivatives positions in 2012 that management overlooked.
Industry analysts characterized Pinto and Smith as capable hands at the helm of Jpmorgan, but noted that Dimon’s health scare raised new questions about who will succeed him for the long term. He also battled throat cancer after a diagnosis in 2014.
“This will definitely get the board to step up their efforts to put in place a succession plan because it is not going to be easy to replace someone like Dimon,” said a Hong Kong- based consultant who works with the bank. “They will have to cast their net very, very wide and will have to look both internally and externally.”