Jamie Dimon didn’t have much trouble telling Warren Buffett he’d hired one of his top lieutenants.
The JPMorgan CEO said that he called Buffett after hiring Todd Combs in December, who will lead a new $10 billion group at the bank and act as a special advisor to Dimon.
“It’s a free country, and people make their own decisions,” Dimon said in an interview at the Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. “I did call Warren. He probably wouldn’t have preferred it, but he said, ‘if he’s going anywhere, at least he’s going to you.'”
Combs had been at Berkshire since 2010, where he served as CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico and as one of Buffett’s two investment managers. In a press release, Buffett said that Combs “has resigned to accept an interesting and important job at JPMorgan,” and that the bank made “a good decision.”
In his own press release about the hire, Dimon called Combs, a former member of JPMorgan’s board, “one of the greatest investors and leaders I’ve known.” Dimon has praised Buffett time and again over the years, saying that he “represents everything that is good about American capitalism and America itself” after the 95-year-old announced he would step down as Berkshire’s CEO. Business Insider contacted Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan for comment.
Dimon, 69, addressed questions of his own future as a corporate leader during Thursday’s interview. When asked whether he wants to stay in the job his characteristic five more years, Dimon said yes, “at least.”
“I love what I do. It’s up to the board how long I do it. As long as I have the energy and the spit in the eye and the fire in the gut, yeah, I want to do it,” he said.
And he said he has absolutely no interest in becoming the Fed Chair: “Absolutely, positively, no chance, no way, no how for any reason.” (Dimon reiterated the importance of the central bank’s independence in the interview, which has come into question in recent days given the Justice Department’s investigation. He said that President Donald Trump also thinks we need an independent board.)
If a president offered him the job of Treasury Secretary, however, Dimon said he would “consider it.” He’d need to understand “what they want and how they want to operate” before making a decision.
For now, though, Dimon said he’s happy to be his own boss.
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