JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says a espresso desk chat with Jeff Bezos in late 1999 virtually pulled him away from Wall Avenue, however not fairly.
What Occurred: Dimon remembers hitting it off with the Amazon founder and has “been associates ever since,” but the thought of working the then‑fledgling e‑commerce agency was “only a bridge too far.”
Throughout an episode of the Acquired podcast final Wednesday, Dimon mentioned Bezos was looking for an organization president once they met in Seattle. “I might by no means put on a go well with once more… I might reside on a houseboat,” he joked, including that uprooting his younger household and abandoning finance felt like an alternate‑universe script.
The banker had motive to hesitate. Amazon’s market cap sat close to $5 billion on the finish of 2000, a far cry from as we speak’s $2.4 trillion large. After flying residence, Dimon “bought critical” about his job hunt, fielding affords from unnamed international funding banks, insurance coverage titan AIG by way of a name from Hank Greenberg and even Residence Depot’s founders, although he admitted he had by no means stepped foot in considered one of their shops.
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The decision that caught got here from a headhunter pitching Chicago’s troubled Financial institution One. Analyst Mike Mayo famously warned that “even Hercules could not repair it,” but Dimon noticed an opportunity to rebuild in his pure habitat. He invested $60 million, which was half his internet value into Financial institution One inventory on day one, vowing to “go down with the ship or up with the ship.”
Why It Issues: Dimon, over the course of the identical podcast, revealed his funding mantra of “do not blow up“. It’s a guideline that has formed the chance tradition at JPMorgan Chase, influencing its method to monetary administration and decision-making.
In a separate interview, Jamie Dimon instructed a crowd at New York’s Radio Metropolis Music Corridor that he purchased his first inventory at 14 in 1972 solely to look at the market plunge 45% inside two years. The jolt that, he mentioned, taught him to “at all times issue the invisible dangers.”
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