(Yahoo! Finance) - Jamie Dimon made it clear last week that he sees an end to his time as boss of the biggest US bank, putting a new spotlight on key deputies who are considered front runners for his job.
The disclosure came during JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) annual investor day in Manhattan, where analysts and bank followers gathered to hear about plans for the next year.
Dimon said his timetable for an exit is "not five years anymore" and that the succession process is "well on the way."
"There's more line of sight that in the next three or four years Jamie Dimon likely becomes chairman and somebody else becomes CEO of JPMorgan," said Wells Fargo bank analyst Mike Mayo, who asked Dimon for a succession update during the investor day event.
The CEO's comments refocused attention on executives who have the best shot at Dimon’s job, all of whom gave presentations about their business lines. Some are in new roles following a management reshuffling in January designed to give candidates a wider range of responsibilities.
Two names keep surfacing inside and outside the bank: Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, who each have a hand in overseeing the two biggest parts of the company.
It's "a two-woman race," Mayo said.
From the outside, Mayo added, “it seems like a coin flip between the two, making the next few years very important. Will both sides of the company perform well? Will there be an incident?”
The two executives share much in the way of credentials. Both have acted as JPMorgan's chief financial officer, both are in their mid-50s, and both have been with the bank longer than Dimon, who joined in 2004.
Until January they were also both in charge of JPMorgan’s sprawling consumer and small business unit, which churns out the highest returns for the bank and oversees everything from checking accounts to credit cards to home loans.
Then Piepszak, as part of the management shake-up, became co-CEO of JPMorgan’s commercial and investment bank, which acts as a major player on Wall Street. Lake became the sole boss of the consumer division.
Analysts are in near-lockstep agreement about the difficulty JPMorgan’s board will face in trying to fill Dimon’s shoes.
The 68-year-old is the longest-serving big bank CEO and the only one left who called the shots during the 2008 financial crisis. Since he took over in 2006, JPMorgan’s stock price has risen to roughly eight times its initial value.
The "handoff will be tricky no matter what," Ebrahim Poonawala, a Bank of America Securities analyst, said.
The bank already has a plan if the sudden and unforeseen happens to Dimon, a contingency referred to by insiders and even Dimon himself as the "hit by a bus" scenario.
In that case, the job will go to COO Daniel Pinto.
"We’ve got built-in succession with Daniel Pinto. How many companies can say that?" Dimon said last week.
Pinto's career with the bank stretches back to 1983, when he began working in Buenos Aires as a financial analyst and foreign exchange trader for a predecessor company called Manufacturers Hanover.
In 2020, the Argentine executive had his chance to step in when Dimon was struck with a sudden and near-fatal heart injury.
Pinto served as co-CEO for a month along with Gordon Smith, another executive who at one time was also considered a "hit by a bus" replacement for Dimon. Smith retired in 2021.
But even if this scenario were to take place again, Pinto wouldn't be expected to remain CEO over the long term.
Although Lake and Piepszak are considered frontrunners for the permanent CEO job, the dynamics of the race can always change.
There are some other relatively young executives who have been elevated into new roles recently, including Piepszak’s co-head of the commercial and investment bank, Troy Rohrbaugh.
A newer face to outsiders, Rohrbaugh has spent nearly two decades with JPMorgan. He came up through the bank’s fixed-income trading business after previously working for Goldman Sachs (GS).
Another "long shot" possibility that the board may consider is bringing in someone outside of JPMorgan, according to Mayo, especially if JPMorgan continues to place more focus on developing artificial intelligence and other new technologies.
Even with Dimon out of the CEO role, he probably won't be gone from the bank entirely. He could remain as chair of the board.
The bank has previously indicated that its next CEO will not hold the dual role of board chair, a split that is receiving an increasing amount of support from shareholders.
Last week, nearly 43% of JPMorgan stockholders voted in favor of such an arrangement, up from 37.5% in 2023.
"Will I stay as chairman for a while?” Dimon said last week, at investor day. “We'll see."
By David Hollerith - Senior Reporter
