Live podcast with Jamie Dimon, CEO JPMorgan Chase: Corporate culture, risk and the global economy

**Nicolai Tangen** (0:00)
Hi, everyone. I'm Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovendvald Fund. Today, I'm in really good company because I'm here with the one and only Jamie Dimon. He runs the largest bank in the world, 20 years at the helm, and his annual shareholder letters are mandatory reading for everybody in the financial sector. We recorded this live on stage at our investment conference in Oslo.
We are proud investors in JPMorgan. Jamie, welcome to In Good Company.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
JPMorgan's origins trace back to 1799 to a company founded to supply water to a growing New York City. It quickly evolved into a bank and shaped its lasting legacy.
Over the next two centuries, it grew alongside the economy, financing railroads, supporting industry, and expanding with global trade. But its role became most visible in moments of crisis. In 1907, as panic spread through the financial system, JPMorgan helped organize a response, stabilizing markets at a critical moment and exposing the need for a central bank. Through the Great Depression, it endured one of the most severe economic downturns in modern history. In 2000, the merger of JPMorgan and Chase Manhattan created a new kind of institution. In 2008, it stepped into the center of the crisis, acquiring Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.
Built on generations of decisions and culture, today JPMorgan Chase stands among the largest and most influential financial institutions in the world.

**Nicolai Tangen** (1:40)
You are there.
Well, warm welcome, warm welcome. When we look at these pictures showing the history, the first question has to be, what is the culture that has made you able to be so successful now after 200 years?

**Jamie Dimon** (1:57)
Well, first of all, welcome everybody. Thrilled to be here. He is persistent, by the way. When he asked me about, do I come in 2025? I said, I can't. He said, what about this date in 2026?
So, here I am, but I am thrilled to be here. It's wonderful.
The cultures are, but my whole life I was always conscious about when we talk about culture, because you can say all the words, a lot of people can say employees, customers and they don't mean it. So, the real way you develop a culture is you're just driving it. The grit and courage like every meeting, everything you do, every trip you make, every person you hire, every person you fire, it really is about doing the right thing for the customer eventually. Obviously, do they got to take care of your employee. A lot of cultures on Wall Street, as you know, it was about money. How much money can someone make? And some of the things in Wall Street are built on the compensation schemes. They're not server client scheme. And so, I've just been relentless. When we first did the JPMorgan Bank One merger in 2004, I had a book of how we do business, and Bill Harrison, who was the chairman at the time, said, you got to send it out. I was like, no, let's do it first. Let's let people experience the detail, the diligence, the fortress balance sheet, all these things. The follow up, the open meetings that you have to speak up. It's not even a choice, hopefully. So if you do that, you just drive a certain type of culture.

**Nicolai Tangen** (3:20)
You say you have to fight it every day. What are the kind of things you do in meetings?

**Jamie Dimon** (3:25)
So, you got to get out. So what you do in the meeting or in a bus trip or in a road trip, that you're talking to your people, everyone knows that you're only trying to do the right thing for the company. So no one in the company could say they would insult me, as long as they say because I think it's in the best interest of the company, the client, that I didn't bring my list.
But that we just take a trip. I come back with a long list of stuff. Matter of fact, my management committee doesn't like when I come back from a trip, because they know I'm about to lay on them. Why do we do this and why do we do that? Why do we do this?
And this is across technology and just about everything else you do. But even in that room, I tell people, my management team, the agenda is your agenda. Don't say to me, you didn't put it on the agenda. You have to say, that is everything important on this list? And it actually puts the burden on the other people to say, well, you skipped this. Or what about that issue or something? So every business has a follow up list. Every business, when you travel around the world, knows each other.