Who Will Take Over From Jamie Dimon as CEO of JPMorganChase?
Now that Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase, is reportedly eyeing a job as US Treasury Secretary should Kamala Harris win next week’s US election, who is likely to take over from Dimon as CEO of America’s biggest bank?
Speculation as to when Dimon, 68, might step down as CEO, has swirled since April, when JPMorganChase admitted for the first time that it was “spending significant time on developing operating committee members who are well known to shareholders as strong potential CEO candidates”.
Meaning, whoever becomes the next CEO of JPMorganChase will be appointed from within and not be an external candidate.
Just to give you an idea of the scale of the job, JPMorganChase is America’s biggest bank, with operations in 100 countries and more than 250,000 staff. It has $3.9tn (£3tn) in assets, which is bigger than the GDP of either France or the UK.
Two names have been suggested to replace Jamie Dimon as CEO of JPMorgan Chase and they are both women.
Who is Jennifer Piepszak?
Jennifer Piepszak is Co-CEO of JPMorganChase’s Commercial & Investment Bank (CIB), which encompasses global investment banking, commercial banking and corporate banking as well as markets and securities services and global payments.
Piepszak has spent 30 years with the firm, rising through leadership roles across various divisions including co-leading the consumer and community banking division from 2021 to 2023, and before that being CFO from 2019 to 2021.
“The expansion of Jennifer Piepszak’s role in commercial banking and investment banking gives her an edge in the succession planning,” Stephen Biggar, a banking analyst at Argus Research, told Reuters in January.
Who is Marianne Lake?
Marianne Lake now runs JPMorgan’s consumer and community banking division by herself after years of co-leading it with Piepszak. Like Piepszak, Lake previously served as CFO from 2013 to 2019. At the time, Goldman Sachs now managing director Richard Ramsden described her as “probably one of the most gifted CFOs around”.
Lake, who was born in America but grew up in Britain, has long been speculated as a potential successor to Dimon. A JPMorgan executive told Reuters anonymously in 2018, “I would put my money on her above anybody else” as Dimon’s most likely successor.
Big shoes to fill
Whoever takes over from Dimon will have big shoes to fill. Dimon has transformed JPMorganChase through canny acquisitions and steering the bank through turbulent waters.
One senior former colleague described his intimate knowledge of every part of the enormous bank as being like a yachtsman who has spent his life on a ship.
“He knows what every vibration on every rope means,” they told The Sunday Times. “He can feel it in his palms, in his fingers. There’s nobody else in that bank who can do that.”
So crucial is Jamie Dimon to the bank, whose share price hit an all-time high last month, that Wells Fargo Securities Managing Director Mike Mayo has dubbed him the US$25 billion man –
“That’s how much the stock would drop if he were to leave tomorrow,” Mayo said.
As to how Dimon himself sees his legacy as CEO, he told one interviewer: “I hope people say we’re gonna miss the son of a bitch when he’s gone and he made the world a better place and created opportunity.”
Impossible act to follow
Yet according to The Sunday Times, some JPMorganChase bankers are spooked by what might happen after Dimon hands over the wheel.
“Many of us are worried about what comes next,” one senior JPMorgan banker told The Sunday Times. “He’s such a huge figure, and no matter who follows him, he’ll be an impossible act to follow.”
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