Who is Jamie Dimon, the crisis-saving banker worth 35 million dollars a year – Corriere.it

The same 11 banks that deposited $30 billion last week to help California’s Silicon Valley Bank are debating today a strategy to also intervene in the rescue of First Republic Bank. At the head of the consortium is JP Morgan, led by CEO Jamie Dimon, which is evaluating various options to organize an investment to increase the bank’s capital and cope with the 70 billion dollar withdrawals made by customers after the collapse of Svb.

The beginnings

James “Jamie” Dimon, 67, began his career in finance after graduating in Psychology and Economics from Tufts University, near Boston. He then continued his studies at the Harvard Business School, where in 1982 he obtained a master’s degree in business administration. And in the summers between one year of university and the next, he gained his first work experience, first at Shearson (an investment banking and retail brokerage company active until 1994) and then at Goldman Sachs. After graduation rejects job offers from major lenders such as Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs itself to follow the family friend, Sandy Weill, to American Express where he held the position of assistant. An experience that ends in August 1985, when both resign and decide to restore a small consumer finance company in Baltimore, Commercial Credit. Weill, after having invested 7 million dollars, becomes its CEO. After a series of major acquisitions, Dimon is fired and splits from the business partner.

Career at Jp Morgan

In the early 2000s he took over the helm of BankOne, a struggling Chicago bank. In 2004 it was rehabilitated and then sold to JP Morgan Chase for 58 billion dollars. After only two years he was appointed CEO and president of the largest bank in the world and one of the famous American Big Four (along with Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo). In March 2008 he became a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The first acquisition of a failing bank takes place that same year and Bear Stearns, involved in the real estate market crisis linked to subprime mortgages, with losses over $22 billion. The operation is worth about 1.2 billion dollars, paying 10 dollars per share, a far cry from the 133 dollars of the pre-crisis period. In 2011, the New York prosecutors charged with fraud Bear Stearns and Emc Mortgage, both of the JP Morgan group, for subprime mortgage fraud that caused a great recession around the world. On November 19, 2013, JPMorgan Chase settled for a $13 billion settlement. In October 2008, he also took over Washington Mutual Bank, the largest savings bank in the country, for 1.8 billion dollars, also brought to its knees by the crisis and for this reason considered one of the largest bank failures in American history.

Assets and salary

Magazine Time has included Jamie Dimon among the 100 most influential people in the world for four editions: in 1006, in 2008, in 2009 and in 2011. He is one of the few bank administrators to have become a billionaire, with assets – according to Forbes – of 1.5 billion dollars (slightly down from 1.6 billion in 2022). JP Morgan shareholders agreed to drop the $52.6 million special award from its bonus, not just for 2023 but also for the future. Therefore the manager, who in 2021 grossed 84.4 million dollars, this year will receive 1.5 million in base salary and a bonus of 33 million, for a total of only 34.5 million.