Who will run against President Donald Trump in the 2020 election? In the past year, the rumor mill has sputtered out names including entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and rapper Kanye West.
But J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who once said he’d “love to be president of the United States of America,” seems to be officially striking himself off the list. At least for now.
The outspoken chairman, CEO, and president of the banking giant (who has said he expects Trump to be a one-term president) announced plans on Tuesday to stay on as J.P. Morgan’s head for “approximately five more years,” or until 2023.
The news should quash suggestions of a 2020 presidential run for the CEO of the largest U.S. bank, analysts say. Dimon has made his rounds in the White Hourse as an advisor, having served on the White House’s Strategic and Policy Forum before its dissolution mid-2017. He also reportedly turned down the role of Treasury Secretary, making way for another fellow Wall Streeter Steven Mnuchin.
“The announcement that Jamie Dimon was potentially staying for five additional years as CEO should end speculation that he may leave for political office or political appointments in the near term,” wrote Keefe Bruyette and Woods analysts on Monday.
While Dimon had previously said that “it’s too hard and too late” to run for the White House position in 2016, tittle-tattle of a potential campaign has persisted. In late 2017, Dimon reinvigorated such rumors after saying that Democrats have no chance in the 2020 elections unless they find “a strong centrist, pro-business, pro-free enterprise candidate.” Commenters thought that description sounded a lot like like Dimon himself.
Still, the most recent announcement won’t completely cancel out the possibility of a potential run, as Dimon is not chained to his role for the next five years. Nor has it completely wiped away questions of a 2024 run, when Dimon will turn 68.
More importantly for J.P. Morgan’s shareholders, however, the bank also set out a clearer succession plan in preparation of Dimon’s potential departure five years down the road. It appointed 55-year-old Daniel Pinto and 59-year-old Gordon Smith as co-chief operating officers and co-presidents. Pinto currently heads J.P. Morgan’s corporate and investment banking unit, while Smith leads its consumer banking side. It’s also hard to say whether the two are in the running for CEO, given their ages.
J.P. Morgan also pointed to a handful of other executives making their way up the ranks in the company.
“Our other outstanding CEOs, Mary Erdoes (50), Asset and Wealth Management, and Doug Petno (52), Commercial Bank, along with our Chief Financial Officer, Marianne Lake (48), took on expanded roles last year and have played progressively more significant roles partnering across the firm in helping manage the company,” Dimon said in a statement.
It’s not hard to see why shareholders appear to be okay with Dimon, who become CEO in 2005, for another five years. By market capitalization, Dimon has helped turn the company into the largest U.S. bank, valued at $403 billion. In the year he took leadership, Citigroup was the largest U.S. bank, valued at $247 billion, and J.P. Morgan was he third largest with a market capitalization of about $135 billion.
Those gains have not come without hiccups. J.P. Morgan agreed to pay $13 billion to regulators to settle claims surrounding the financial crisis in 2013. A J.P. Morgan trader known as “London Whale,” meanwhile, lost the firm $6.2 billion on bets in the corporate debt market in 2012. Dimon took a 50% pay cut for the incident.
