On Thursday, British bank Standard Chartered hired Bill Winters as its chief executive. You may recognize Winters, who has been in hibernation for the past few years running a small asset management firm. But before that, he was a top executive at JPMorgan Chase. In September 2008, Fortune dubbed Winters, along with then-CFO Heidi Miller among others, Dimon’s Swat Team, in an article about how the bank had managed to avoid the worst of the financial crisis that had begun to unfurl.
Winters was considered a potential successor to Dimon. But in 2009, he was abruptly ousted from the bank by the JPMorgan CEO. A Wall Street Journal article published Thursday reported that Winters had told friends he was shown the door because he never really believed in the universal banking model of combining an investment bank with a traditional lender. Of course, that model has worked out very well for Dimon. And now it looks like Winters, the former investment banker, is embracing the lending business as well. Standard Chartered (STAN) is a very large commercial bank.
Winters was one of the first members of Dimon’s swat team to leave JPMorgan. Since then, nearly all of those executives have left the bank, many in the wake of JPMorgan’s $6 billion so-called London Whale trading loss. Winters and the others likely felt that they were ready to run their own firms, and Jamie Dimon was not ready to stop running his. Whatever the reason, JPMorgan, under Dimon’s tutelage, has proven to be a viable training ground for future CEOs. These days, a growing number of large financial firms are now run by ex-JPMorganites. Here’s where they have landed:
Standard Chartered
Bill Winters spent nearly 20 years at JPMorgan, most of that time as an investment banker. He had a reputation for being obsessed with the dangers of bad loans. That helped JPMorgan during the Russian debt crisis of the 1990s, and later on during the housing bust. In 2004, he was promoted to co-chief executive of JPMorgan's investment bank. And in 2008 he played a key role integrating Bear Stearns after JPMorgan bought the firm. But in 2009, Winters was out. How will he do at Standard Chartered? Investors seem enthusiastic. Shares of the British bank are up nearly 5% on the news of his hire.
Visa
A little over two years ago, Charlie Scharf, the ex-head of retail banking at JPMorgan, became the CEO of credit card company Visa (V). He took the reins at the company while it was responding to changes from new financial regulations that were set to cut into its profits. Scharf has won praise from analysts and investors. Visa's shares have more than doubled since he joined the company. And he has convinced other top JPMorgan executives to join him. Ryan McInerney, who was considered an up-and-comer at JPMorgan, moved took the reins as Visa's president in 2013.
First Data
In mid-2013, Frank Bisignano left JPMorgan to be the chief executive of giant payment processing firm First Data. At JPMorgan, Bisignano was known as a Mr. Fix-It. Since joining First Data, which is owned by private equity firm KKR, he has been busy building the company's ties to Silicon Valley. Late last year, those efforts paid off. Apple announced that it would use First Data's encryption technology to process payments through the tech company's new transaction service Apple Pay. This month, First Data announced its first quarterly profit in more than seven years.
The Carlyle Group
Last year, Michael Cavanagh made news when he left JPMorgan to join giant private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG) as a co-president and co-chief operating officer. Cavanagh was seen as a key lieutenant to Jamie Dimon. He led the bank's internal investigation into the London Whale trading loss, and even testified in front of Congress on the matter. And, like the others who left, Cavanagh was seen as a potential successor to Dimon. Cavanagh even took a salary cut to join Carlyle, down from $17 million a year at JPMorgan to $7 million for the first three years at Carlyle. But it wasn't too bad of a deal. Carlyle also agreed to match the $32 million dollars in restricted stock that Cavanagh lost when he left the bank.
