This week, Jamie Dimon cemented his place in business lore. A lot of people who follow technology and media news might not recognize his name: Jamie Dimon is arguably one of America’s Top 10 most powerful businessmen. Time magazine put him in their Top 100, but this week, after buying Bear Stearns for $2/share, I cannot imagine how his power is not great enough to crack the Top 10.
According to this Wikipedia page:
- Jamie Dimon majored in biology and economics at Tufts University. He earned an Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.
- Upon his graduation in 1982, Sandy Weill convinced him to turn down offers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to join him as an assistant at American Express. Though Weill could not offer the same amount of money as the investment banks, Weill promised Dimon that he would have “fun.”
- In a power struggle, Weill left American Express in 1985, Dimon followed him, and the two took over Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company, from Control Data, which became the vehicle that Dimon and Weill would use to propel themselves to the top of the financial world.
- Through a series of unprecedented mergers and acquisitions, in 1998 Dimon and Weill were able to form the largest financial services conglomerate the world had ever seen, Citigroup.
- Although Weill was the one who made the deals, Dimon was the “whiz kid” who made the numbers work.
- Dimon left Citigroup in November 1998. It was rumored at the time that he and Weill got into an argument in 1997 over the perceived lack of promotion given by Dimon to Weill’s daughter, Jessica M. Bibliowicz.
- In his 2005 University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Fireside Chat and 2006 Kellogg School interviews, Dimon stated that he was fired by Weill.
- In March 2000 Dimon became CEO of Bank One, then the nation’s fifth largest bank. He became president of J.P. Morgan Chase in mid-2004 when it acquired Bank One.
In case you were sleeping, Dimon orchestrated the acquisition of Bear Stearns this past week.
Jamie Dimon was a figure that I looked up to when I was completing my finance degree from 1996-99. Dimon was ambitious, but he was always in someone else’s shadow.
Midway through my undergraduate studies, I accepted a job as customer service rep for RBC’s VISA unit, RBC was and remains the largest bank in Canada. I naively believed that I could go on to become the CEO of RBC if I stuck around for 20 years or so. When I completed my degree, I walked degree-in-hand into my manager’s office and diplomatically asked for a transfer to RBC’s investment banking unit, Dominion Securities, Canada’s answer to Goldman Sachs (well… there’s only one Goldman… but you know what I mean).
Anyway, my manager said she would never let me be transferred to another department, because I was a very good performer. My rating, I’ll never forget, was 149. The average bank employee in my unit’s score was 100… so I had the productivity of 1.5 employees… that was an early lesson in business for me: if you do too good of a job, you might hinder your rise. One more reason why I wanted out of corporate environments.
The greater lesson: Dimon was shown the door by the man whose empire he helped build. I did not go through that at RBC, but I did at my last gig. I did not take it personally, but I knew that despite my brash demeanor… I could prove myself with patience.
Today, via shrewd dealmaking, Dimon’s JP Morgan Chase stands above Citigroup, with a market cap of $150B compared to Citigroup’s $110B.
More importantly, by acquiring Bear Stearns for a song… Dimon’s grip on the financial industry strengthens. Meanwhile, Citigroup continues to try to estimate the damage and toll it will take from the same sub-prime credit mess than knocked off Bear Stearns.
From a management perspective, I always stress the importance of having a good platform, but Dimon’s rise echoes what Jack Welch used to say: it’s important to have runway, too. Dimon had so much runway that he was able to take just about any platform and exponentially make it greater.
It also does go to show, maybe patience is a virtue.
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