October 16, 2021
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Jamie Dimon (Sort Of) Returns Tom Brady's Favor

Back in October, the most wonderful aspect of the JPMorgan Whale Tale emerged in the pages of Vanity Fair: the day Vice-Chairman Jimmy Lee barricaded himself in his office determined to come up with a way to help Jamie Dimon, and after hours of thinking real hard, summoned his six secretaries and told them they had a job to do, which was getting Tom Brady on the horn so he could deliver a pep talk sure to cheer up the boss. Was the call kind of awkward, considering the two had never spoken and Brady's lack of useful investment ideas likely meant his big speech involved not much more than  "Even Super Bowl champion quarterbacks have bad days" and "Keep your chin up out there?" Probably. And yet some sort of bond was clearly forged, which would explain why Dimon felt compelled to throw Brady this bone:
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Back in October, the most wonderful aspect of the JPMorgan Whale Tale emerged in the pages of Vanity Fair: the day Vice-Chairman Jimmy Lee barricaded himself in his office determined to come up with a way to help Jamie Dimon, and after hours of thinking real hard, summoned his six secretaries and told them they had a job to do, which was getting Tom Brady on the horn so he could deliver a pep talk sure to cheer up the boss. Was the call kind of awkward, considering the two had never spoken and Brady's lack of useful investment ideas likely meant his big speech involved not much more than "Even Super Bowl champion quarterbacks have bad days" and "Keep your chin up out there?" Probably. And yet some sort of bond was clearly forged, which would explain why Dimon felt compelled to throw Brady this bone:

Dimon said [yesterday during a panel discussion in the German town of Koenigstein] that Tom Brady, the New England Patriots football player who has passed Joe Montana for the most National Football League playoff wins by a quarterback, called to cheer him up after the trading loss. “I owe him a lot,” Dimon said.

"A lot" seems like a bit of a stretch but a nice gesture following Brady's fourth-consecutive season-ending bed-shitting nevertheless.

Jain Calls With JPMorgan’s Dimon to Allow Banks to Fail [Bloomberg]
Earlier: On One of The Worst Days Of WhaleGate For Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s Vice-Chairman Thought It Would Make Him Feel Better To Hear From Another Guy Who’s Sort Of But Not Really Been There

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On One of The Worst Days Of WhaleGate For Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's Vice-Chairman Thought It Would Make Him Feel Better To Hear From Another Guy Who's Sort Of But Not Really Been There

As you may have heard, Summer 2012 was not the best of times for JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. On May 10, after having said that a Bloomberg story about one of its London traders making very large, very worrisome bets was but "a tempest in a teapot," the bank announced that said trader had lost approximately $2 billion. On May 11, it was suggested that Dimon's title of most loved-banker on Wall Street was up for grabs. On June 19, Dimon was forced to testify on Capitol Hill. In July 13, JPMorgan was forced to revise the $2 billion loss to $6 billion. Associates who surrounded Dimon during these days said that the stress was visibly wearing on him, and that it was arguably one of the worst periods of his career. And while senior executives logged long hours and gave up weekends and holidays to help deal with the fallout, gathering documents and unwinding trades and trying to manage the crisis, only one busted his ass to actually give Jamie Dimon what he needed: Jimmy Lee. After spending much of July 13 again explaining the trading loss to the media and to research analysts—including making the stunning admission that the traders in London may have intentionally mismarked the trades to make them look less egregious, a potential illegality that the Justice Department is still investigating—the exhausted Dimon got an unexpected call from Tom Brady, the star quarterback of the New England Patriots. (Jimmy Lee, a legendary sports fan, had arranged for it.) Brady reminded Dimon that even Super Bowl champs have bad days and told him “to hang in there.” And after thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it some more, snapped his finger and said, "I've got it- we need to get Tom Brady on the line." And then gathered his five secretaries in his office and told them to clear his and their schedules because they needed to get this deal done by the end of the day. And when he finally got Brady on the line, assured him that the call would be welcome and that it wouldn't be awkward* or seem out of left field. "Just tell him he's got this. Tell him that if banking or football were easy everyone would be doing it. Tell him that even on your worst day, you still get to go home and bang that little Brazilian of yours. No, wait, scratch that. Tell him you can't generate profits and be responsible for the losses at the same time. Tell him, 'Keep your chin, up, kid.' Tell him you're down by 7, you just took a huge sack, Gronkowski's got a broken leg and you're not wearing a cup. But there's still time left on that clock, Jamie D. And as long as there's time left on that clock, you're going to score a mother fucking touchdown. Tell him, 'Go get 'em, Tiger.' You still there, pal?" Jamie Dimon On The Line [VF]

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[caption id="attachment_73269" align="alignright" width="260" caption="People who *can* dance"][/caption] There are a lot of things Jamie Dimon is very, very good at: building a fortress balance sheet, chatting up reporters in elevators, doing sake bombs, and being appreciably better looking than his peers, to name just a few. In other areas, the JPMorgan CEO has left room for improvement. For example, his dancing skills, about which Dimon's own wife and mother are unsparing in their directness at this point. JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon “is a terrible dancer,” his wife, Judy Dimon, said last night at a gala for Ballet Hispanico, of which JPMorgan was the lead sponsor. She then moved her shoulders straight up and down to demonstrate what the 56 year-old leader of the biggest US bank, with $2.27 trillion of assets at year-end, does on the dance floor. Jame Dimon's mom, Themis Dimon, was no more encouraging. Is he a good dancer? "No," she said, shaking her head. Jamie Dimon wasn't present to prove otherwise. “Unfortunately he couldn’t be here tonight because he had another commitment,” said his wife, a Ballet Hispanico board member and the event’s honorary chairman. Too bad. Jamie Dimon missed a good party. His wife, in a slim-fitting coral gown, danced a salsa with New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, reminiscent of his moves in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. Speaking of people who can hold their own on the dance floor? “We like to dance,” Jamie Dimon's father Theodore Dimon, there with his wife and Jamie's twin brother, told Bloomberg. “We dance the fox trot -- it’s nice and easy.” Scene Last Night: Victor Cruz, Dimon for Ballet Hispanico [Bloomberg]

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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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