Last week, JPMorgan Chase startled Wall Street with an abrupt disclosure that two of its senior bankers — Troy Rohrbaugh and Doug Petno — had been named co-presidents, setting up what looks like a definitive horse race to replace 70-year-old Jamie Dimon.
The announcement is indicative of interesting developments inside the House of Dimon even if there’s nothing definitive about this bake-off.
First, despite Dimon’s embrace of constructs like DEI over the years, the place is at bottom a meritocracy.
The spinout of JPM is that Rohrbaugh and Petno were chosen after a long and deliberate board decision. That left no room for Marianne Lake, the perceived front-runner for Dimon’s job and one of the highest ranking women on Wall Street.
She had been running a unit — consumer and community banking — nearly as big and complex as the other guys’. Rohrbaugh took her slot. Thursday, 56-year-old Lake “retired,” declining to supply a comment for the press release that announced the big reshuffle.
Based on my reporting, it hasn’t gone unnoticed inside the top echelons of JPM that two white dudes were chosen to succeed Dimon over a glass-ceiling-busting woman. Dimon was once fixated on constructs like Diversity Equity and Inclusion, so much so that his bank kept touting its benefits well after the Trump administration and the Supreme Court began reminding big companies that doling out jobs based on race or gender is unconstitutional.
But the year is 2026 and times are a-changing. Lake wasn’t happy with last week’s reshuffle, I am told, and I can understand why: She is a good executive, well-liked and smart. The DEI-obsessed business media anointed her as Dimon’s successor, but it was her performance that earned her a place at the top of JPM — though maybe not at the very top.
Dimon and his board are getting the message that the country has moved well past the time when race and gender should matter more than your record of achievement.
Still, the future of JPM remains murky — and don’t be surprised if a woman eventually makes it to the top of the bank. The spin is that Rohrbaugh and Petno are the heir apparents to Dimon, who is expected to relinquish the CEO spot in about three years and remain as executive chairman of the bank for years after that.
Solid records
To be sure, Rohrbaugh’s and Petno’s records have been solid. You don’t read much lately about big trading losses or scandals, and JPM always seems to be in the middle of the most high-profile IPOs (see SpaceX). What is needed is competence, and by all accounts both Rohrbaugh, a former options trader, and Petno, an investment banker by training, have that in spades.
But somehow, I can’t see either of them being the second coming of Dimon, one of corporate America’s most voluble leaders. That Rohrbaugh and Petno could conceivably be running the nation’s largest bank — taking over for a CEO who defined American finance for decades — is a little shocking. They are not exactly household names, as Dimon was even when he worked with Sandy Weill creating Citigroup long before becoming Chase CEO in 2006. That alone is enough to make me and others who follow this stuff entertain some doubts about whether either of them actually will.
Also, I’ve seen this act before. There have been too many would-be successors to Dimon to count, only to see them ushered out of JPM’s Midtown HQ when Dimon grew tired of their quirks and questioned their abilities.
It was an especially weird case of déjà vu for those of us who were around in 2021, recalling how Dimon had staged a strikingly similar race — only that time with two top female bankers, Jennifer Piepszak and Lake.
Piepszak took herself out of the race early last year, saying she didn’t want the top job.
So what does last week’s decidedly odd news add up to? From my perspective, things could get even weirder — that is to say, there’s a better-than-even chance Dimon and JPMorgan’s board will ditch these two dudes for yet somebody else to lead the bank. There’s also a chance that somebody could turn out to be a woman.
I also couldn’t help but notice that in last week’s management shakeup, Mary Erdoes, the long-time head of the JPM asset and wealth management division, is sticking around. So is Piepszak, Dimon’s chief operating officer. Both of them received $20 million so-called retention awards.
Erdoes, it was noted to me, operates one of the most important and public-facing businesses in the company; she brings a degree of Dimonesque swagger to the job.
She’s had some miscues. She didn’t cut off ties with Jeffrey Epstein fast enough, some critics say, although she wasn’t alone in that regard. But Dimon knows talent. That’s why he’s paying big bucks to keep both her and Piepszak onboard — and possibly to reopen the race to succeed him.
