“You want honesty, decency, a work ethic, you want a compassion, you want a deep knowledge about the business. You want them to sweat, wear the company’s jersey every day. Very often I also run into corporate executives who talk about the company like it’s a third party. You want them to read customer complaints and say, ‘God, that’s embarrassing,’ and call the customer up and say ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
— JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on the Charlie Rose Show in July. Dimon is famous for digging deep into the business, a tendency that will serve him as JPMorgan absorbs its most recent acqusition. Last night, federal regulators seized the nation’s largest savings and loan, Washington Mutual , in the largest bank failure in history. Meanwhile, regulators brokered a deal to sell the bank to JPMorgan for $1.9 billion. In March, JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in a similar fire-sale scenario.
