It was a Sunday afternoon and Jamie Dimon was internet hosting 100 potential candidates in his New York Metropolis condo when he was referred to as into a gathering with Citigroup’s Sandy Weill and John Reed. The duo requested him to drive to the workplace, the place they outlined structural modifications to the crew and finally requested Dimon to resign.
Reflecting on the day in 1998 throughout a podcast look aired in July, Dimon remembered the dialog at first “didn’t make sense to me.”
Talking to Acquired, the JPMorgan Chase CEO defined: “They stated they needed to make a number of modifications [and] had three of them: ‘One, we want to make this person in charge of that.’ I stated OK, nicely that didn’t make sense to me. The second, they needed to place somebody in control of the worldwide funding financial institution which I used to be working, I believed it was one other silly resolution.
“And the third they said ‘And we want you to resign.’ I said OK, because at that moment I knew it was all arranged. The board had voted, the press release was written.”
Returning house, Dimon informed his spouse and three younger daughters—aged 14, 12, and 10 on the time—that he had been fired. Their reactions different, he stated: “The youthful one says: ‘Daddy, do we have to sleep on the streets?’ I stated ‘no, no, we’re OK.’ The center one, who was all the time obsessive about school for some motive, stated ‘Can I still go to college?’ I stated yeah.
“And the oldest one said: ‘Great, since you don’t need it, can I have your cell phone?’”
Now the boss of America’s largest financial institution, Dimon stated within the hours that adopted the firing, his condo—which he nonetheless owns practically three a long time later—stuffed with about 50 senior managers from the financial institution to mark his departure.
“It was like being at your own wake,” Dimon recalled. “And there’s one actually tall man who got here in, an excellent pal of mine, and my daughter seems to be up and says: ‘Who are you?’ and he says ‘I work for your daddy.’ And he or she stated: ‘Not anymore you don’t.’
“And that was it, I was OK. I tell people it was my net worth, not my self-worth, that was involved.”
How did Jamie Dimon turn out to be JPMorgan CEO?
After leaving Citi, Dimon—in his 40s on the time—hunted round for his subsequent problem. He famously met with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos about taking the place of president on the tech big. In the end, Dimon determined a leap into retail was a “bridge too far” however gained the billionaire as a pal to at the present time. Dimon additionally met with bosses at Residence Depot—who he “loved”—however once more didn’t proceed with as a result of it was to date out of his “habitat”.
Then a chance arose a number of years later to guide struggling Financial institution One, primarily based in Chicago.
“I just thought this was a chance, if the family’s willing to move,” Dimon stated. “We ended up loving Chicago, Chicago is a superb metropolis in plenty of other ways, and life is what you make it.
“I put half my money in [Bank One] stock at the time … I was going to be the captain of the ship, I was going to go down [or up] with the ship, I made it clear to everyone I was here permanently and it’ll be what it is. I got to work literally the next day.”
Dimon did certainly purchase $60 million price of inventory within the firm he was about to guide, a calculated transfer to precise his dedication to the establishment to shareholders and the market. The Wall Avenue veteran needed to indicate that as an “out of town” New York implant, he was nonetheless in “100%, lock, stock and barrel,” including: “They also knew I was making decisions that I thought were right for the long-term health of the company, not for the short term.”
A model of this story was printed on Fortune.com on July 17, 2025.
