JPMorgan’s immensity invites such golly-gee statistics. The $51 billion in profit that the bank generated over the last year is bigger than the gross domestic product of Jordan. Its credit cards, loans, and checking and savings accounts are in nearly half of American households.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the world’s largest investment bank, took over the reigns of JP Morgan in January 2006. Since then, the share price is up more than 350%, the bank’s assets have topped $4 trillion and the company is worth $500 billion. In the annals of JP Morgan’s history, Jamie Dimon’s name may sit alone below the eponymous John Pierpont Morgan himself.
Jamie Dimon was always seen as a future leader. Working as Sandy Weill’s right hand, he was instrumental in building Citigroup into a financial services giant. He then moved to run Bank One, which was acquired by JP Morgan in 2004 largely, it has been said, to secure Dimon as the next CEO of the bank. In 2006, Dimon took over as CEO.
The size of JP Morgan, $154 billion in revenue over the past year, allows it to do things other banks can only dream of. In 2022 alone it spent $14 billion on improving its technology (that is more than the total revenue its investment banking rival Goldman Sachs makes in a quarter). It allows them to buy luxury travel agencies, foodie websites and a college financial aid company that turned into a $175 million scam.
But at its core, JP Morgan has been a consistent, well-run perhaps even boring bank surrounded by peers that have at different times been run poorly and tried to do too much. And that has started at the stop with Jamie Dimon.
The ethos Dimon brought seems less of the financial world than of other big companies: Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart, combine a broad offering with a preoccupation on costs; Jack Welch’s GE, focus on market position and employee upgrades; Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger’s Berkshire Hathaway, be patient and simple.
This article is a fascinating look at JP Morgan under the reign of Jamie Dimon. A man who has built a career in large financial services institutions. And a man who some speculate has much grander ambitions. Who may one day want to take his talents to lead a much larger financial institution – the US Government.
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