It sits at the helm of a world empire with 255,350 staff, 85 million deposit accounts, $ 122.9 billion in turnover and $ 3.4 trillion in assets. The only banks in the world that are larger are the state-owned ones in China.
The reason for the head of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, or otherwise the most powerful banker in the world, the one that the Sunday Times characterizes in their extensive tribute this week, as “a modern Midas”.
Dimon has finance written in his DNA. His paternal grandfather, Panos Papadimitriou, left Greece for New York after the outbreak of the Greek-Turkish war in 1919. Papadimitriou changed his name to Dimon, believing it sounded more “French” and ended up working as stockbroker in Shearson Hammill. Jamie Dimon’s father, Theodoros, also started his career there.
Dimon lived a comfortable life as a child. His family lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, and moved to the lavish Park Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side when he was 12 years old.
Together with his two brothers, they attended Browning, a private school for boys. Dimon studied at Tufts University, where he wrote a paper on the merger of Shearson Hammill with the ransom vehicle of the famous Sandy Vale banker, Hayden Stone.
Dimon’s parents knew Vale and so his mother let him read the work. The result was that young Dimon won a summer apprenticeship with Veil. It was the beginning of a relationship that was to determine his career, as in the following years he became the right hand of Vail, the “architect” of Citigroup.
After graduating from Harvard (where he met his later wife, Judy Kent, who at the time was considered the most beautiful and intelligent girl in the class), Dimon turned down offers from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. , to work alongside Vail at American Express.
Vail closed a series of deals that eventually created the then powerful Citigroup. At 65, the American banker and his then 42-year-old protégé, Dimon, were at the top of the world. But behind the surface, there was a bitterness. Veil began to dislike the attention falling on Dimon.
And when Dimon refused to give a promotion to Veil’s daughter, who worked for the bank, he fired him.
Dimon was shocked. But he believes that this dismissal made him what he is today. As people who know him say, he is used to firing others, even believing that he is doing them a favor. “It’s almost like saying ‘I had such a successful career because I was fired from Sandy Vale, so let me do the same for you, you get fired, now find a bank to run,'” an acquaintance told the Sunday Times.
This is exactly what he did after his dismissal from Veil. He spent two years reading and traveling and then returned to the helm of Bank One, a troubled bank in Chicago. Dimon cut costs, fired, banked One Bank and in 2004 sold it to JP Morgan Chase and became its CEO.
What follows justifies the title of “Midas” given to him by the Sunday Times. In Dimon’s day, JP Morgan gave investors returns that easily outperformed all of its competitors.
The shareholders increased their money fivefold (they actually made 530%) after taking over the CEO in December 2005. In contrast, during the same period Goldman Sachs gave returns of 276%, Morgan Stanley 188% and Bank of America 29%. Those who invested in Citigroup during this period lost 80% of their money.
The 65-year-old JP Morgan CEO himself has a fortune of $ 1.9 billion and earns about $ 30 million a year.
So what makes the world’s most powerful banker and the only one to emerge from the global financial crisis stronger? Dimon thought at some point in 2018 to claim the US presidency. In fact, he did not hide it from the media, saying at one point about the then US President Donald Trump: “I am just as hard as him, I am smarter than him.” But in the end, he concluded, given the anti-banker climate in American society, it would be impossible to win. And so, he decided not to pursue it.
For now, he lives up to the informal title of “Wall Street president.”
He has, after all, many fans. “He is one of the best bank CEOs in the world. He is both very strategic and very active in practice. He knows every detail. Analyzes things and gives quick answers. He is very smart and sometimes a little tough. “He always keeps his word,” says a European banker.
Of course, with such great power, it could only provoke dislikes. “He is a king-emperor. He is a narcissist. “Under the surface, he has the style of the American CEOs of the 1960s or even the 1950s, and he really believes in absolute power,” says an investment banker from JP Morgan, who left the bank under bad circumstances.
However, Jamie Dimon does not forget those who helped him. According to the Sunday Times, he has a folded piece of paper in his pocket, where he writes all those to whom he owes favors and those to whom he owes.
The unknown incident
Even the King of Wall Street had to start low. Jamie Dimon is used to telling a story from the time he worked as a business consultant before going to Harvard. One of the consulting company’s partners ordered the then 20-year-old Dimon to work all weekend to have a project ready on Monday morning. Dimon did what he was told.
But at 9 a.m. Monday, the partner was not in his office. He did not appear at 10 nor at 12.
Eventually, he arrived at the office at 1 a.m. and admitted that he did not really need that report Monday morning. He just wanted to make sure he had it in time. “But you ruined my weekend,” Dimon protested. “And for that reason, I will not work on a project with you again,” she told him.
His colleagues took the young Dimon aside and explained to him that things do not work out that way, this is not a decision he can make on his own. “If they want, let them fire me,” he replied.
He finally won. He was not fired. Dimon is used to telling this story to show that everyone should treat staff with respect. But one can draw another conclusion from this episode: Jamie Dimon will do exactly what Jamie Dimon wants.
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