Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

his view of acquisition opportunities. “There are three things that have to make sense,” he said. “And they are not in order of importance. One is the business logic. There should be clear business logic to it. The second is the price. Sometimes there is a price [at] which you cannot make it pay for shareholders. And the third is the ability to exe

(Dimon is fond of Mark Twain’s wry comment that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.)

“We think [the business] should be prepared for adverse times,” Dimon told analysts in a conference call. “In fact, we think if you’re strong in adverse times that that puts you in the position where you actually can do more interesting things, either hire people or buy other companies that are having a tough time.” Dimon and his team were constant

Ever a student of history, Dimon sent Paulson a note including a citation from a speech Theodore Roosevelt made in Paris in 1910: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred

(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)

Is he irreplaceable? Is he the Steve Jobs of JPMorgan Chase?

“If you can’t say it in the room, don’t say it at all,”

“He has an amazing sense of risk,” says his former colleague at Smith Barney, Bob Lessin, currently vice chairman of investment bank Jeffries & Company. “He understands it intuitively better than anyone alive, so he doesn’t do stupid things. The industry has a recent history of dramatically mis-pricing risk relative to return. Jamie never fell

Moments after sitting down, Lee pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and put it down on the table next to him. Dimon looked at Lee and said, “What’s that?” Lee replied, “It’s the list of things I needed to do today. I wanted to make sure I covered all the topics I wanted to talk to you about.” Dimon looked incredulous. “Let me see that,” he sa