Big shot of the week
JAMIE DIMON, 61 CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT, AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, JP MORGAN
Should there have been any confirmation needed of Jamie dimon’s status at the pinnacle of America’s banking elite, it came during a meeting in the oval office in 2009 between President obama and Citibank chairman Richard Parsons.
As Parsons began schooling the president on banking minutiae, obama wearily held up his hand and sighed: ‘I’ll talk to Jamie.’
The £20m-a-year JP Morgan boss – he holds the Napoleonesque title of chairman, president and chief executive – is Washington’s go-to banker. Twice during the financial crisis the government needed him to rescue struggling banks (Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual), and twice their man delivered.
While most banks spent the meltdown fighting for survival, JP’s fortress-like balance sheet delivered profits through every quarter.
While most reputations were vaporised, dimon’s was enhanced.
he is banking’s head honcho. The big enchilada. he is, undisputedly, the King of Wall Street.
his statesman-like profile has led some to believe he might fancy a pop at being president himself at some point.
BLESSED with swagger and Paul Newman good looks, he possesses a charisma uncommon among bankers. A family man, he’s been married for 34 years to wife Judy, whom he met at harvard.
Their first date was a game of tennis in which dimon, ever the competitor, thrashed her.
Banking is in the family blood. his Greek immigrant grandfather was a stockbroker and his father worked for (then) American express boss Sandy Weill. It was Weill who persuaded a young Jamie to eschew the security of a graduate job with Goldman Sachs in 1982 to become his assistant, offering far less money but an opportunity to learn at his knee.
When Weill left in 1986, dimon followed him to an unglamorous operation called Commercial Credit. dimon admits that he was staring into the abyss at some points, wondering if he’d made the right decision. But Weill began to make his mark, and over the next decade the pair embarked upon a series of daring acquisitions, including Smith Barney, Travelers Group and Salomon Brothers.
dimon and Weill’s relationship was akin to father and son. Their partnership Wall Street’s most successful double act. Both, in turn, became extremely wealthy.
It’s hard to pinpoint when things began to sour. Some say it was when dimon sacked Weill’s daughter – always a gutsy move. others point to a profile in the New York Times which portrayed dimon as the more talented of the two. Weill, a vain booby whose appearances on Time magazine covers still take pride of place on his office wall, went ballistic.
The final straw came when Weill took over Citigroup. he refused to put dimon on the board, making it clear he was never going to get the chief executive job he craved. dimon made a nuisance of himself whenever he could. Weill sacked him.
dimon took a year out and composed a bucket list (he is very big on making lists). he accompanied his three daughters on a trip around europe, took up the guitar and vented his pent up aggression through boxing.
As Wall Street buzzed with anticipation as to what the golden boy would do next, he settled on a chief executive job with modest Bank one in Chicago, with a view to building it into something special, just as his mentor had done.
The opportunity came four years later when JP Morgan proposed a merger. The deal, as much as anything, was about the legendary bank securing dimon’s services, and a year later he returned to Wall Street as the newly merged company’s chief executive. But not everyone’s a fan.
he can be an arrogant so-and-so. After 13 years at the helm, during which he’s seen off throat cancer, some say he’s deliberately stifled succession plans. Strong contenders such as Bill Winters (now at Standard Chartered) or Jes Staley (now head of Barclays) left. others accuse him of being slow to give praise while quick to take credit for other people’s achievements.
But Wall Street’s a tough place where good guys are in short supply. And Jamie dimon is a very, very good banker.