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Also Known As Dimon
CEO of Chase
James Dimon is an American billionaire business executive and banker, who has been the chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase since 2005. Dimon was previously on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon was included in Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.6 billion as of June 2023.
Career :
Commercial credit and transition into Citigroup -
Sandy Weill left American Express in 1985 and Dimon followed him. The two then took over Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company, from Control Data. At 30 years of age, Dimon served as the chief financial officer, helping to turn the company around. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, in 1998 Dimon and Weill were able to form a large financial services conglomerate, Citigroup. Dimon left Citigroup in November 1998, after being asked to resign by Weill during a weekend executive retreat. It was rumored at the time that he and Weill argued in 1997 over Dimon's not promoting Weill's daughter, Jessica M. Bibliowicz, although that happened over a year before Dimon's departure. At least one other account cites a request by Dimon to be treated as an equal as the real reason.
Move to J.P. Morgan :
In March 2000, Dimon became CEO of Bank One, the nation's fifth largest bank. When JPMorgan Chase merged with Bank One in July 2004, Dimon became president and chief operating officer of the combined company.
On December 31, 2005, he was named CEO of JPMorgan Chase and on December 31, 2006, he was named Chairman and President. In March 2008 he was a Class A board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Under Dimon's leadership, with the acquisitions during his tenure, JPMorgan Chase has become the leading U.S. bank in domestic assets under management, market capitalization value, and publicly traded stock value. In 2009, Dimon was considered one of "The TopGun CEOs" by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency.
On September 26, 2011, Dimon was involved in a high-profile heated exchange with Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada, in which Dimon said provisions of the Basel III international financial regulations discriminate against U.S. banks and are "anti-American". On May 10, 2012, JPMorgan Chase initiated an emergency conference call to report a loss of at least $2 billion in trades that Dimon said were "designed to hedge the bank's overall credit risks". The strategy was, in Dimon's words, "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored". The episode was investigated by the Federal Reserve, the SEC, and the FBI and the central actor was labelled with the epithet the London Whale.
Dimon commented on the Volcker Rule in January 2012, "Part of the Volcker Rule I agreed with, which is no prop trading. But market making is an essential function. And the public should recognize that we have the widest, the deepest, the most transparent capital markets in the world. And part of that is because we have enormous market making. If the rules were written as they originally came out; I suspect they'll be changed, it would really make it hard to be a market maker in the United States." He served as chairman of the executive committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.
On January 24, 2014, it was announced that Dimon would receive $20 million for his work in 2013, a year of record profits and stock price under Dimon's reign, despite significant losses that year due to scandals and payments of fines. The award was a 74% raise, which included over $18 million in restricted stock. This is despite the recent $13 billion settlement with the US government, the largest in history, for bad mortgages and practices during the financial crisis. Forbes reported that, in a statement following news of Dimon's compensation, the bank said, "Under Mr. Dimon's stewardship, the Company has fortified its control infrastructure and processes and strengthened each of its key businesses while continuing to focus on strengthening the Company's leadership capabilities across all levels."
In May 2023, Jamie Dimon testified under oath in connection with two lawsuits filed against JPMorgan Chase. The plaintiffs accused the bank of serving the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This happened within five years (1998-2013) after his crimes became known; the bank itself described the claims as meritless.
Jamie Dimon was born March 13, 1956 in New York City. He is one of three sons of Theodore and Themis (née Kalos) Dimon, who had Greek ancestry. His paternal grandfather was a Greek immigrant who worked as a banker in Izmir and Athens, and changed the family name from Papademetriou to Dimon; reportedly it was either because as he was trying to find work as a busboy he realized people did not want to hire Greeks, or because he had fallen in love with a French girl and wanted his name to sound French.Dimon has an older brother, Peter, and a fraternal twin brother, Ted. Both his father and grandfather were stockbrokers at Shearson.
He attended the Browning School, and majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University, where he graduated summa cum laude. At Tufts, Dimon wrote an essay on Shearson's mergers; his mother sent the paper to Sandy Weill, who hired Dimon to work at Shearson during one summer break, doing budgets.
After graduating, he worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group for two years before enrolling at Harvard Business School, along with classmates Jeff Immelt, Steve Burke, Stephen Mandel, and Seth Klarman. During the summer at Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs. He graduated in 1982, earning an MBA as a Baker Scholar.
After graduation from Harvard Business School, Sandy Weill convinced him to turn down offers from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers to join him as an assistant at American Express. Although Weill could not offer the same amount of money as the investment banks, he promised Dimon that he would have "fun". Dimon's father, Theodore Dimon, was an executive vice president at American Express.
