The race at JPMorgan to replace CEO Jamie Dimon is on full throttle – even if the mega-bank is doing a great job keeping a lid on the contretemps from leaking to the press.
The legendary financier recently shocked the banking world when he said he would step down sooner than his original time frame of five years – maybe two or three years when he’s 70 years of age or so.
I say “shocked” because Dimon is still at the top of his game, keeping JPMorgan largely scandal-free and holding the distinction as maybe the one CEO who steered a big bank successfully through the 2008 financial crisis and a lot more.
Even so, Dimon is said to have set up a three-way race among consumer-banking chief Marianne Lake, co-head of JPM’s investment and commercial bank Jennifer Piepszak, and Troy Rohrbaugh, the other commercial and investment bank co-CEO.
On The Money hears the field is actually wider. Doug Petno, co-head of global banking, is a rising star inside JPM and also appears on the Dimon replacement shortlist.
I am also told you can’t discount Mary Erdoes, JPM’s outward facing wealth and management chief. She has some negatives – namely, her unit continued to do business with the dead sex predator Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for sex.
Erdoes wasn’t alone in inviting Epstein back into the Wall Street tent, and eventually booted him from her platform. Dimon, meanwhile, thinks she’s among his most capable client-focused executives, which is one of the top priorities of any CEO. Plus, her division is important in the JPM ecosystem, and she has embraced AI as an important tool in wealth management.
I am also told that no one should be surprised if Dimon goes outside the firm for a successor: Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, an old pal from Dimon’s days working at not only JPM but also Citigroup and Travelers Group, is being discussed internally. It’s unclear how seriously Dimon is currently looking at Scharf but the two have remained close over the years.
Scharf also might be the closest person to Dimon’s skill set in the banking business in that he runs a big bank, understands the client and risk side of the balance sheet.
He’s also been turning around a place that was mired in chaosl over the bank’s phony account scandal. Shares of Wells are up 122% from their depths in 2020, right around the time Scharf took over. It’s something Dimon is said to have noticed, which is partly why his succession race is getting so interesting.
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