Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon
James "Jamie" Dimonis an American business executive. He is chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, largest of the Big Four American banks, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon was named to Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. He was also named to Institutional Investor's Best CEOs list in the All-America Executive Team Survey from 2008 through 2011...
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth13 March 1956
CityNew York City, NY
If business doesn't thrive, it hurts America. We need improved relations, more collaboration, more thought and more consistency as we go about trying to make sure we have the best country in the world. Not scapegoating and finger-pointing.
I learn from all our major competitors, whether they're in or out of the U.S. Wells Fargo is very actively, very aggressively, and very successfully building its U.S. investment bank.
I always tell people, "There's a book on everyone." I get some of that book before I do anything. If I want to deeply understand someone's reputation, I'll talk to their friends, their former bosses, their peers, and I'll learn a lot about them. I want them to be trusted. I want them to be respected. I want them to give a s - -. Then there are the intangibles: physical and emotional stamina, the ability to confront issues. I can ask all I want about those things, but I also have to see a lot of it.
If I ran the whole place like it was my way or the highway, we would not be as good a company. I'm going to have mistakes - they'll be made on my watch and will embarrass me. But I'll also make sure the company learns from them so it can become a better company.
Look, every institution will make mistakes. I acknowledge we make mistakes, and they can hurt my reputation and our company's. But you also must be willing to let go a little bit, trust others, and not always be so stringent, provided you have robust controls.
Their [American banks] big issue will be if they want to deal with the biggest companies, which are doing a lot of business overseas. How they do that is a big question. It's almost impossible to build a global investment bank from scratch. If they want to do that, they probably will have to do an acquisition.
Let's look at lending, where they're using big data for the credit side. And it's just credit data enhanced, by the way, which we do, too. It's nothing mystical. But they're very good at reducing the pain points. They can underwrite it quicker using - I'm just going to call it big data, for lack of a better term: "Why does it take two weeks? Why can't you do it in 15 minutes?"
We got a lot of excellent people and businesses from Bear and WaMu. But Bear definitely was more painful. WaMu got us into Florida, California, and other states, which was a huge benefit - to expand and grow and add middle-market, private banking, investment banking, and other products, too.
The real story in housing will be a recovery in the economy that will drive a recovery in housing, When people are working, when there are more jobs, more households forming and people go back to buying cars, they're going to want their apartments and homes. And that's when you'll start to see a recovery in home prices.
But in general, as countries get wealthier, there's going to be more savings, which means you're going to have intermediation. So part of it is just the huge growth in wealth, and part of it was globalization - these companies, these clients getting much bigger and much more global.
You know, the benefit in life is to say, 'Maybe you made a mistake, let's dig deep.
I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.
JP Morgan always has higher capital liquidity, that is partially to make up for mistakes and problems and obviously its a tough economy. We support an oversight committee, we supported some of the compensation, new compensation rules, though we already follow most of them. We support a lot of it.
I hate the word universal, because I don't know exactly what it means. The question is, does it work for the client? Travelers was a diversified, financial conglomerate that did very well. The businesses had nothing to do with each other.