What occurs when CEO Jamie Dimon leaves?

As Wall Road’s high bankers huddled in New York final month, making ready to persuade Elon Musk’s SpaceX that they need to be chosen to guide its upcoming IPO, one agency wasn’t letting its star advisor miss the bake-off.

Among the many squad of JPMorgan Chase funding bankers flying 2,500 miles west to California to pitch SpaceX was the lender’s boss, billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon, folks with data of the journey advised CNBC.

The morning after that pitch assembly, on Dec. 19, Dimon was already again in his customary early Friday perch: sitting in his financial institution’s New York foyer, taking conferences in full view of the hundreds of workers streaming by means of the constructing’s turnstiles.

The whirlwind few days spotlight the truth of Dimon’s singular influence on JPMorgan, the world’s largest financial institution by market capitalization.

Dimon marks his twentieth anniversary as CEO this month and stays deeply concerned throughout the sprawling companies of JPMorgan, an enormous throughout Wall Road and Principal Road with $4.6 trillion in property. Half a dozen executives throughout funding banking, asset administration and client banking echoed that view.

Which makes the inevitable questions surrounding Dimon’s tenure loom massive as he approaches 70 years of age. Dimon has for years maintained, considerably tongue-in-cheek, that his retirement was perpetually 5 years away. In 2024, for the primary time, he acknowledged that window was shrinking.

Will JPMorgan’s period of dominance be over when Dimon exits as CEO?

“Given his observe file, anyone else could be a downgrade,” stated Ben Mackovak, a financial institution board member and investor by means of his agency Strategic Worth Financial institution Companions.

“I am positive any person else may develop into the position and shock folks,” Mackovak stated. “However on day one, nobody goes to be as certified to run that financial institution as Jamie.”

In twenty years, Dimon took a middle-of-the-pack American lender and, together with his distinctive mixture of judgment, paranoia, consideration to element and scope of imaginative and prescient, created a juggernaut of finance that the world hadn’t seen earlier than.

Throughout calm occasions, he invested aggressively for the long run, and during times of tumult, like 2008 and 2023, he prevented pitfalls that consumed different banks, permitting him to snap up three failed establishments.

Over the previous 20 years, the financial institution’s annual internet earnings soared greater than 500% to $58.5 billion in 2024. The agency studies full-year 2025 outcomes on Tuesday.

Now, at a market cap of roughly $900 billion, JPMorgan is value almost as a lot as the following three largest U.S. banks mixed: Financial institution of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

Moreover working JPMorgan, Dimon has taken on an outsized position in international finance as a high voice explaining market gyrations or rising dangers and influencing regulators amid coverage shifts. It was Dimon’s recession warning on a Fox Information phase in April that helped persuade President Donald Trump to pivot on his commerce coverage, igniting a historic reduction rally.

“It is simply the aura he has, the credibility that he is constructed up within the markets,” stated Fitch Rankings analyst Chris Wolfe. “The minute you step out of that position, it isn’t like you possibly can simply hand that over, your successor would not routinely inherit that. I feel that is the true problem.”

The query of who may take over for Dimon — who was already a most cancers survivor when he almost died in 2020 from a ruptured aorta — has been brazenly mentioned amongst buyers for greater than a decade.

To buyers, his almost certainly successor is at present Marianne Lake, head of the agency’s big client financial institution and former CFO of the corporate, adopted by Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, the co-heads of the agency’s industrial and funding financial institution.

Different contenders embody asset and wealth administration head Mary Erdoes and CFO Jeremy Barnum.

“If buyers have been to do a straw ballot at present, they’d most likely decide Marianne,” stated Truist financial institution analyst Brian Foran.

“The working joke is that she’s a human supercomputer in relation to banking,” Foran stated. “Actually, the one query mark folks have about her is, she’s so analytical, can she do the sort of ‘rah-rah’ stuff to encourage the gross sales pressure?”

Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo hypothesized that JPMorgan inventory may instantly drop 5% if Dimon have been to all of a sudden exit, whatever the named alternative. (The financial institution has stated Dimon would function chairman even after relinquishing the CEO position.)

It is a considerably frequent incidence on Wall Road for firms with iconic CEOs: The inventory premium shrinks, at the very least for a interval, when their longtime leaders announce their departures. For example, Berkshire Hathaway shares trailed the S&P 500 final yr after Warren Buffett stated he was stepping down as CEO.

When requested about CEO succession, JPMorgan executives say that Dimon is as plugged in as ever, and unlikely to step down quickly.

Relying on how lengthy he sticks round, which means it isn’t essentially his present direct studies like Lake, Petno and Rohrbaugh who’re in line, however extra junior executives now being groomed and evaluated for management roles, they advised CNBC.

“There’s lots of work going into imagining that day with out him,” stated a JPMorgan govt who requested to not be named talking about his boss. “If he stays till he is 85, it isn’t his direct studies which might be going to be subsequent in line, its perhaps one or two ranges down from at present.”

“Does he depart an enormous vacuum? Sure,” stated the chief. “It is not deadly, although, as a result of we have been planning for it. I feel there’s combos of those that collectively can create the identical end result.”

The CEO of a industrial financial institution and former JPMorgan govt, who described Dimon as a mentor, additionally stated he did not assume Dimon would step down quickly.

“Jamie’s by no means going to stop,” stated the CEO, who requested for anonymity to talk candidly. “What else would he do the place he is as essential as he’s now? His buddies are all folks from work. He loves it.”

Nonetheless, past the day-to-day administration of an organization with 318,000 workers, Dimon appears intent on organising JPMorgan for a future with out him.

In current months, Dimon oversaw the completion of the financial institution’s new $3 billion headquarters in midtown Manhattan and introduced a $1.5 trillion initiative to bolster industries essential to U.S. pursuits.

And, maybe most crucially, he continues to instill his values into the agency’s administration workforce.

Final yr, at a convention for JPMorgan’s high 400 executives, Dimon rattled off a listing of once-great firms that died although mismanagement. Finance is particularly vulnerable to this menace, due to the temptation to control numbers for short-term acquire, he stated.

“Vacationers blew up. Citi blew up, twice. Bear Stearns failed, Lehman failed, I am right here as a result of Financial institution One screwed up a bunch of companies,” Dimon stated, referring to a predecessor agency to JPMorgan.

“In case you take a look at this stuff, it is complacency, it is paperwork, it is conceitedness. Loads of it’s dishonest numbers. Failure to set requirements,” Dimon stated. “These are the cancers that kill firms.”

No person is aware of when Dimon’s final day as CEO will come, besides to know that it’s approaching. After adjusting his normal 5-year retirement reply to trace at a sooner departure, Dimon hasn’t superior that clock any additional.

“As nice as he’s, he cannot do that without end,” stated Barclays banking analyst Jason Goldberg. “Daily that passes, you are a day nearer to the tip.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.