Jamie Dimon, the billionaire banker CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has led the massive financial company for the better part of the last two decades, driving up its assets and stock value to new heights.
“In the midst of the most serious and far-reaching financial crisis since the 1930s — much of it caused by plain old avarice and bad judgment — Dimon and JPMorgan Chase stood apart,” biographer Duff McDonald wrote of Dimon in his 2009 book “Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase,” referring to the 2008 financial crisis, in which Dimon truly came to power.
McDonald continued: “Much of the melodramatic coverage of Wall Street postcrisis has focused on its flaws — the hubris and the greed. Jamie Dimon’s story contains the opposites — the values of clarity, consistency, integrity, and courage. By sticking to them, Dimon has unquestionably become the dominant banking executive of his era.”
Here’s a look at Dimon’s career, from his stint as a management consultant to becoming the billionaire financier propelling JPMorgan Chase’s meteoric rise.
Representatives for Dimon declined to comment for this story when reached by Business Insider.
Born into the world of finance
Dimon was born in New York on March 13, 1956. He was one of three sons born to his father, Theodore Dimon, and mother, Themis (née Kalos). Like his father before him, Theodore was a stockbroker at Shearson — and eventually ascended to executive vice president of American Express.
After her sons graduated from college, Themis pursued her Master’s degree in Psychology at Teachers College and volunteered at a preschool program.
The couple, who spent 65 years married, died within 22 hours of each other, according to their 2016 obituaries.
A graduate of both Tufts and Harvard universities, Dimon was quick to enter the world of finance after receiving his MBA in 1982.
A banking whiz kid from the start
Though he briefly worked for Boston Consulting Group as a management consultant while attending Harvard, Dimon’s trajectory in banking was clear from his early years. At the behest of his mentor, financier Sandy Weill, he turned down offers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to accept a job at American Express, where his father worked, shortly after graduation.
When Weill left American Express, Dimon followed. The pair took over a finance company, Commercial Credit, which they eventually built into the financial services conglomerate Citigroup.
An unexpected ouster led to a key pivot
Weill asked Dimon to resign in 1998 after 15 years of working together. He would later tell The New York Times it was because Dimon wanted to take over as CEO, but Weill wasn’t ready to retire and ultimately regretted that the conflict led to Dimon’s ouster.
For his part, Dimon has said he was “totally surprised” by his firing from Citigroup, CNBC reported he said on an episode of the “Coffee with The Greats” podcast. He considered jobs at Amazon and Home Depot, the outlet reported, but in 2000 decided to try his hand as CEO of Bank One, which was at the time the nation’s fifth-largest bank, and eventually merged with JPMorgan.
JPMorgan’s merger with One Bank saw Dimon’s power surge
When JPMorgan merged with One Bank in 2004, Dimon became the new banking giant’s president and chief operating officer. He became the bank’s CEO at the end of the following year.
He quickly slashed expenses across the board, according to McDonald’s biography, including ending the practice of the corporate wing of the bank paying for clients to attend the US Open tennis tournament, canceling a $5 billion contract with IBM for computer management services, and cutting regional managers’ compensation by as much as 50 percent over the following two years.
“He’s going down like cod liver oil,” Bloomberg reported one banker said of Dimon’s approach, referring to a supplement that users regularly report makes them gag.
McDonald wrote in his biography of Dimon that another unnamed banker said: “The news that Jamie is flying in is similar to being told that Ivan the Terrible is coming for tea.”
His demanding leadership has proven extremely valuable over the years
In 2008, Dimon played a key role in rescuing major banks from collapse amid the financial crisis. JPMorgan purchased Bear Stearns for $10 a share and also acquired Washington Mutual, which was at the time the largest US savings and loan institution, The New York Times reported.
“Jamie was demanding. He was relentless,” Theresa Sweeney, his assistant from 1993 to 2000, is quoted as saying in McDonald’s biography. “And he always wanted the one thing I hadn’t done. I’d walk in there with my pad of paper and he’d give me 10 things to do. I’d go back to my desk. An hour later, he’d call me and I’d have already done nine of them. And he’d ask for the tenth. And he pounded and pounded and pounded until you got it done. By the third time he asked for something, you better have been at a funeral, because that was the only acceptable excuse for not having it finished.”
Under his leadership, and due largely to the strategic partnerships and acquisitions, JPMorgan’s value has skyrocketed, becoming today’s leading American bank in domestic assets, market capitalization, and stock value.
College sweethearts became parents to three girls
Dimon married his college sweetheart, Judith Kent, after meeting at Harvard. They have three daughters together: Julia, Laura, and Kara Leigh.
Judith, an established scholar in her own right with a degree from Tulane University and dual masters in psychology from Catholic University and Harvard’s business school, worked alongside Dimon at American Express as a management trainee shortly before their wedding, according to a wedding announcement published in The New York Times in 1983.
Dimon has had several health scares over the years, including a battle with throat cancer in 2014 and an emergency heart surgery in 2020 after he suffered an aortic dissection and nearly died, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A longtime political donor, Dimon has considered a run for office himself
For many years, Dimon was a prominent donor to candidates and officials of the Democratic party. Though he labeled himself as “barely a Democrat” in 2012, his political ties to the Obama administration led to speculation he would be named Secretary of the Treasury. However, the position was ultimately given to Timothy Geithner.
In 2016, he joined a business advisory forum assembled by then-President Donald Trump, though the forum disbanded roughly a year later. Dimon supported several of Trump’s jobs and tax policies but publicly disagreed with him on matters of immigration and international trade.
He briefly considered his own run for president in 2018. Though he ultimately decided against a run against Trump, MarketWatch reported he said, “I thought about thinking about it.”
Billionaire Bill Ackman encouraged him in 2023 to reconsider a presidential bid, according to Forbes, though the outlet noted Dimon said he expects to lead JPMorgan for at least “three and a half” more years.
While he hasn’t made any moves toward a campaign, it doesn’t appear the door is completely shut to a future political career, Bloomberg reported, with Dimon telling the outlet last spring: “I love my country, and maybe one day I’ll serve my country in one capacity or another.”
Dimon’s continued bank-saving has ensured record JPMorgan profits
Dimon reprised his role as bank-saver in 2023, The New York Times reported, working as a partner with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jerome Powell to convince leaders of 11 major banks to pitch in $30 billion to prevent First Republic from collapsing in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failing in rapid succession.
In doing so, Dimon was “acting as a senior statesperson who is helping to shore up the financial industry in a time of crisis of confidence,” the outlet reported Mike Mayo, a longtime banking analyst, said. “With that comes potentially higher prestige but also potential backlash.”
But so far, the backlash hasn’t come.
Per Fortune, stock values have tripled since Dimon became CEO of the bank, and the Associated Press reported in Q3 of 2023, the bank recorded the largest-ever annual profit among US banks, pulling in nearly $50 bilion.
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