Among the world’s 100 most influential people
Famous Greeks

Among the world’s 100 most influential people

Jamie Dimon, one of the most powerful people of the world in finance and the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest of the Big Four American banks, and was named four times by the TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Dimon’s net worth is about $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Dimon’s fortune derives from a $485 million stake in New York-based JPMorgan, where he’s been chief executive officer since the end of 2005, and an investment portfolio seeded by proceeds from Citigroup stock sales. When Americans are talking about the man who saved America when Wall Street banks collapse one after the other, they refer to him.

Jamie Dimon was born on March 13, 1956 in New York. His parents, Theodore and Themis Dimon, had two more sons. His paternal grandfather was a Greek immigrant who changed the family name from Papademetriou to Dimon and worked as a banker in Athens. At the United States, both he and his son Theodore were stockbrokers at Shearson. Dimon always remains the grandson of a man from Smyrna, who immigrated to the United States from the East to become a highly successful financier.

Veteran Wall Streeter Theodore “Ted” Dimon passed away on June 5, 2016 at the age of 85. Themis Dimon, his wife of 65 years, died a day later, on June 6, at the age of 84.

Dimon went to Browning School and afterwards majored in Psychology and Economics at Tufts University. In 1978, he graduated and enrolled in Harvard Business School, where he established himself as a star student. At that time he met his wife, Judith Kent. He graduated in 1982, earning a Master of Business Administration degree as a Baker Scholar.

In 1982, Dimon started working for Sandy Weill, CEO of American Express, as his assistant until 1985. Then Weill left the credit card behemoth and Dimon followed him to a consumer finance company called Commercial Credit as the chief financial officer. Dimon, the right-hand of Weill, after several multiple mergers, acquisitions and deals, ended up integrating Primerica, Smith Barney and Travelers Group and was named the chairman and CEO of Smith Barney in 1996.

As the acquisitions never stopped, in 1997 Salomon Brothers joined the fold and by the end of the decade, Dimon was the co-chairman and CEO of Salomon Smith Barney Holdings. In 1998, through a series of unprecedented mergers and acquisitions between Travelers and Citicorp, Dimon and Weill were able to form the largest financial services the world had ever seen, called Citigroup. Dimon became its president.

Weill’s resentment of Dimon’s growing stature as well as other reasons, led Dimon to resign in November 1998. On that day he said “I’m never going to work for anyone else again”.

In 2000, Dimon becomes the chairman and CEO of Bank One, the nation’s fifth largest bank. In just four years, Dimon managed to fix the bank’s balance sheets and succeeds with the merge of Bank One with JPMorgan Chase. After the merge, Dimon becomes president and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and one year later, on 31 December 2006, he also becomes chairman of the board.

Under Dimon’s leadership, with the acquisitions during his tenure, JPMorgan Chase has become the leading U.S. bank in domestic assets under management, market capitalization value and publicly traded stock value.

In 2008, he becomes a Class A board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and in 2009 Dimon was considered one of “The TopGun CEOs” by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency. From 2011 to 2012, Dimon also served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of The Business Council.

He was named the CEO of the Year in 2011. He received a $23 million pay package for fiscal year 2011, more than any other bank CEO in the United States. Dimon received $20 million in compensation for his work in fiscal year 2013.

 

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