Too Big to Succeed
What it takes to run JPMorgan, and to hand it over
“You have to be flexible of mind to deal with this new growing complex world.” — Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase, July 2026
Jamie Dimon is 70 years old. He’s been chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase for over 20 years and in charge of a big bank for 25. In the modern era of banking, no CEO has come close to that length of tenure. Yet despite surviving both a heart scare and throat cancer, Dimon is not immortal: he won’t lead the bank forever. This month, the board lined up two possible successors and Dimon followed up with a list of qualities they would need to do the job. As well as having flexibility of mind to deal with a growing complex world, he identified the following:
“You want to be good at management, you want to be good at people, you want to be analytical, you want to be detailed, you want to be a culture carrier, you want to be curious, you want to have heart, you want to have grit, you want to have soul, you want to have work ethic, you want to be able to travel, you want to be able to walk in operating centers and deal with CEOs and prime ministers. It’s all of that.”
That’s quite an ask. Not many mortals boast all of those characteristics. The job is made harder by JPMorgan’s complexity. This past quarter, the bank’s balance sheet crossed $5 trillion. While it cautions that notional numbers exaggerate its exposure, it also carries $63.7 trillion of derivative contracts. The Bank for International Settlements measures these things and ranks JPMorgan the most complex bank on the planet, ahead of Barclays and HSBC and BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs. Its ranking rests on three inputs: those derivative notionals, illiquid “level 3” assets ($29 billion at the end of the first quarter) and trading and available-for-sale securities ($549 billion).
Investor Chris Hohn tells a story about meeting Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan before the global financial crisis. “[I] put his balance sheet in front of him from the annual accounts, and said, you have a multi trillion-dollar balance sheet. Can we walk through the line items, because I don’t understand it. He said, ‘I don’t either.’ Very honest guy. I really liked him, yeah, very honest.”
It’s been a while since I met Jamie Dimon, but I reckon he could walk through the line items of his balance sheet with ease, and his successor would be expected to do the same. The difference is that Dimon watched them grow. When he took over as CEO, JPMorgan’s total assets were $1.2 trillion; they’ve grown almost 5x since. Its annual report that year was 144 pages long; this year, it is 364 pages; headcount was 168,847; now it is 320,560.
Dimon’s successor will be tasked with managing a uniquely complex business. To see how it can be done – and how each approach has already been tested at JPMorgan – read on.