As top Wall Street bankers gathered in New York last month, preparing to convince Elon Musk's SpaceX that they should be tapped to lead its next IPO, one company wasn't letting its star advisor miss the competition.
Among the squad JPMorgan Chase The investment bankers who flew 2,500 miles west to California to pitch SpaceX as the lender's boss, billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon, people with knowledge of the trip, told CNBC.
The morning after that introductory meeting, December 19, Dimon was already back in his usual early Friday position: sitting in the lobby of his bank in New York, taking meetings in full view of the thousands of employees passing through the building's turnstiles.
These heady days highlight the reality of Dimon's singular impact at JPMorgan, the world's largest bank by market capitalization.
Dimon celebrates his 20th anniversary as CEO this month and remains deeply involved in the expanding businesses of JPMorgan, a Wall Street and Main Street giant with $4.6 trillion in assets. Half a dozen investment banking, asset management and consumer banking executives echoed that sentiment.
Which makes the inevitable questions surrounding Dimon's tenure loom large as he approaches age 70. Dimon has maintained for years, somewhat ironically, that his retirement was perpetually five years away. In 2024, for the first time, it acknowledged that that window was shrinking.
Will JPMorgan's era of dominance end when Dimon steps down as CEO?
“Given his track record, anyone else would get a downgrade,” said Ben Mackovak, a member of the bank's board of directors and an investor through his firm Strategic Value Bank Partners.
“I'm sure someone else could take on the role and surprise people,” Mackovak said. “But on day one, no one will be as qualified to run that bank as Jamie.”
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., attends the groundbreaking ceremony for the company's new headquarters at 270 Park Ave. in New York on Oct. 21, 2025.
Eduardo Muñoz | Reuters
In two decades, Dimon took a mid-tier American lender and, with his unique combination of judgment, paranoia, attention to detail, and scope of vision, created a financial giant the world had not seen before.
In calm times, it invested aggressively for the future, and during periods of tumult, such as 2008 and 2023, it avoided obstacles that consumed other banks, allowing it to acquire three failed institutions.
Over the past 20 years, the bank's annual net income has soared more than 500% to $58.5 billion in 2024. The firm reports full-year 2025 results on Tuesday.
Now, with a market capitalization of about $900 billion, JPMorgan is worth almost as much as the next three largest U.S. banks combined: Bank of America, citi group and Wells Fargo.
In addition to running JPMorgan, Dimon has taken on an outsize role in global finance as a leading voice explaining market gyrations or emerging risks and influencing regulators amid policy shifts. It was Dimon's recession warning in a Fox News segment in April that helped convince President Donald Trump to pivot his trade policy, sparking a historic surge of relief.
“It's just the aura he has, the credibility he has built in the markets,” said Chris Wolfe, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The moment you leave that role, it's not like you can just hand it over, your successor doesn't automatically inherit it. I think that's the real challenge.”
Possible successors
The question of who could replace Dimon, who already survived cancer when he nearly died in 2020 from a ruptured aorta, has been openly debated among investors for more than a decade.
For investors, her most likely successor is currently Marianne Lake, head of the company's giant consumer bank and the company's former chief financial officer, followed by Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-heads of the company's commercial and investment bank.
Marianne Lake is head of JPMorgan's consumer banking division.
Source: JPMorgan Chase
Other contenders include head of asset and wealth management Mary Erdoes and chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum.
“If investors did a poll today, they would probably pick Marianne,” said Truist bank analyst Brian Foran.
“The usual joke is that she's a human supercomputer when it comes to banking,” Foran said. “Really, the only question mark people have about her is whether she's very analytical: Can she do the 'rah-rah' kind of things to inspire the sales force?”
Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo hypothesized that JPMorgan shares could immediately fall 5% if Dimon suddenly exited, regardless of the replacement named. (The bank has said Dimon will serve as president even after stepping down as CEO.)
It's a fairly common thing on Wall Street for companies with iconic CEOs: The stock premium shrinks, at least for a period, when their longtime leaders announce their departure. For example, Berkshire Hathaway actions followed S&P 500 last year after Warren Buffett said he would step down as CEO.
“I will never give up”
When asked about the CEO succession, JPMorgan executives said Dimon is as connected as ever and is unlikely to step down anytime soon.
Depending on how long he stays, that means it's not necessarily his current direct reports, like Lake, Petno and Rohrbaugh, who are in line, but more junior executives who are now being groomed and evaluated for leadership roles, they told CNBC.
“There's a lot of work to be done to imagine that day without him,” said a JPMorgan executive who asked not to be identified speaking of his boss. “If he stays until he's 85, it won't be his direct reports next in line, maybe they'll be one or two levels lower than today.”
“Does it leave a huge void? Yes,” said the executive. “However, it is not fatal because we have been planning for it. I think there are combinations of people who together can create the same result.”
The commercial bank CEO and former JPMorgan executive, who described Dimon as a mentor, also said he didn't think Dimon would resign anytime soon.
“Jamie is never going to resign,” said the CEO, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “What else would he do if he's as important as he is now? All his friends are people from work. He loves it.”
Still, beyond the daily management of a company with 318,000 employees, Dimon seems determined to create JPMorgan for a future without it.
Legacy values
In recent months, Dimon oversaw the completion of the bank's new $3 billion headquarters in midtown Manhattan and announced a $1.5 trillion initiative to boost industries crucial to American interests.
And, perhaps most importantly, he continues to instill his values in the company's management team.
Last year, at a conference for JPMorgan's top 400 executives, Dimon rattled off a list of once-great companies that died due to poor management. Finance is especially prone to this threat, because of the temptation to manipulate numbers for short-term gains, he said.
“Travelers blew up. Citi blew up, twice. Bear Stearns failed, Lehman failed, I'm here because Bank One ruined a lot of businesses,” Dimon said, referring to a predecessor firm to JPMorgan.
“If you look at these things, it's complacency, it's bureaucracy, it's arrogance. A lot of it is dishonest numbers. Inability to set standards,” Dimon said. “These are the cancers that kill companies.”
No one knows when Dimon's last day as CEO will come except to know that it's coming. After adjusting his standard five-year retirement answer to hint at an earlier exit, Dimon hasn't moved that clock any further.
“As good as you are, you can't do this forever,” said Jason Goldberg, a banking analyst at Barclays. “Every day that passes, you are one day closer to the end.”
— CNBC's Gabriel Cortés contributed to this report.
