Jamie Dimon Is A Mama Bear

Author:
Bess Levin
Updated:
Jan 14, 2019
Original:
Dec 1, 2010

As anyone who's ever been enveloped in a Jamie Dimon hug knows, when you're with James, you're safe. Yes, he can be demanding and yes, he expects a lot from people and yes, if you fail to deliver, you're going to be held accountable and no, he's not here to coddle you. But the trade off is that Jamie Dimon protects his cubs. Come near one of them, threaten them in anyway and he'll scratch your eyes out.

Where did this instinct come from? Birth, likely, and then honed from an early age, when Dimon would "stand up to bullies who threatened his smaller twin," Teddy. These days he still looks out for Ted, in addition to his three biological daughters, and his approximately 230,000 adopted children. The boys and girls of JPMorgan.

Dimon has a reputation as a cost cutter; it’s a term he hates and one that obscures his protective feeling toward the organization. Linda Bammann, who served a stint as deputy chief risk officer, recalls that when he hired her, he took her to dinner and said: “Every single person in this firm is our responsibility. If we ever have to lay people off, it’s because we haven’t done a good job.” No one would call Dimon cuddly: he is profane, snappish and sparing with praise. What comes through, according to a large sampling of colleagues, is his passion for the organization. His wife’s word for him is “maternal.”

Jamie Dimon: America's Least Hated Banker [NYT]

The past couple of weeks, some might argue, have been the worst of Jamie Dimon's professional career. Although being fired by Sandy Weill in 1998 was obviously a distressing time in Dimon's life, a JPMorgan trader's multi-billion dollar (and counting) loss appears to be even more painful for the CEO, who now has a reputation (and a title: "America's Least Hated Banker") to defend. While it's unlikely that the blunder will cost him his job, every article written questioning Dimon's judgment, suggesting that he is in fact fallible, and wondering aloud if he is simply a pretty face (that is about to get the regulation it has vociferously argued against rammed down its throat) clearly hurts. So far, Dimon has chosen to frame the situation, at least publicly, as a group fuck-up, one for which the responsibility is shared among himself, The Whale, The Whale's bosses, and The Whale's bosses' bosses. Over the weekend, though, a heretofore unmentioned character, whose actions set in motion the events that served to tarnish JD's halo, was added to story. And now, Dimon has a place to channel his anger: on a bloodsucking vermin whose days are numbered. Ever since JPMorgan Chase disclosed a multibillion-dollar trading loss this month, the central mystery has been how a bank known for its skill at risk management could err so badly. As early as 2010, the senior banker who has been blamed for the debacle, Ina Drew, began to lose her grip on the bank’s chief investment office, according to current and former traders. She had guided the bank through some of the most rugged moments of the 2008 financial crisis, earning the trust of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, in the process. But after contracting Lyme disease in 2010, she was frequently out of the office for a critical period, when her unit was making riskier bets, and her absences allowed long-simmering internal divisions and clashing egos to come to the fore, the traders said. The morning conference calls Ms. Drew had presided over devolved into shouting matches between her deputies in New York and London, the traders said. That discord in 2010 and 2011 contributed to the chief investment office’s losing trades in 2012, the current and former bankers said. “When Ina was there, things ran smoothly,” one former trader there said. But Ms. Drew’s firm hand began to weaken after she contracted Lyme disease. Her absences opened the door for tensions among her deputies to flare into the open...Most significant, her deputy in New York was increasingly at loggerheads with her deputy in London who spearheaded the strategy behind the losing bet, Achilles Macris, the current and former traders said. But there was only so much she could do when she was away. So, first off, the tick that bit Drew is a dead man (though probably a woman, as "the female adult is usually the one causing the most bites as males usually die after mating"). If people thought Dimon was mad after being informed of the losses, just wait. He's going to find that bitch tick and shoot her with a cannon. Next, it's time to put some safeguards in place to protect his bank from anymore "surprises." Effective immediately, JPMorgan employees are banned from venturing into the forest, for any reason whatsoever. Same goes for grasslands, marshes, and anywhere tall grass grows. Anyone planning on prancing through the meadows in slow motion to meet up with and embrace a loved one in some kind of romantic gesture can forget it. The JMPorgan Outdoor Club is officially disband. Contact with children who are cub scouts is forbidden. Any girl scouts who attempt to set foot on the premises in order to sell cookies will be shot on sight. (These people are breeding grounds for ticks, what with their expeditions into the woods for merit badges and whatnot. He's going first derivative here, while at the same time trying to not enact mandates that make him look ridiculous.) Discord at Key JPMorgan Unit Is Faulted in Loss [NYT]

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