- When Jamie Dimon left Citigroup, he considered everything from setting up his own bank to teaching or writing a book. Ultimately, the lure of the “big game” kept him in the market for corporate America, and the likes of Amazon and Home Depot came knocking.
It’s hard to imagine Wall Street without JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon—and yet that was very nearly the case if the billionaire banker had chosen differently earlier in his career.
The man dubbed the “white knight of Wall Street” revealed he came close to taking a job in Big Tech, a route that meant he would have left the finance world behind and instead reported to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Dimon’s career story is well known: He began his career at American Express before moving to Commercial Credit as CFO.
During that tenure Commercial Credit acquired the Travelers Corp., where Dimon moved to serve as COO. Concurrently, he served as COO of Travelers subsidiary, Smith Barney.
In 1997, Smith Barney merged with Salomon Brothers, and Dimon was named co-CEO. A year later Dimon took the job of president at Citigroup.
Two years later, Dimon joined Bank One as chairman and CEO, before moving up the ranks at JPMorgan when his company was acquired in 2004.
By 2006 Dimon was named CEO and a year later, chairman of the board.
But in the gap between Citigroup and Bank One, Dimon confirmed he had considered leaving the world of banking—and the obligatory suit—behind.
“I decided to take the summer off, take the kids around the world, and start really thinking about September,” Dimon told the How Leaders Lead podcast in an episode aired last week.
“But I did take a lot of phone calls—I took every one respectfully, some you could call almost insulting what they were offering me. I made sure the headhunters knew I wanted to work,” Dimon continued.
“When I came back in September … I had an office, I started seeing people, and I had ideas. I [was] going to start my own merchant bank, I wrote up documents, I spoke to people, getting partners ... didn’t love it.
“I could’ve just been my own investor ... I didn‘t love it. I thought about just teaching or writing, and I realized I wasn’t done with the big game yet,” he added.
Those options ranged from heading up global investment at a large European bank (“After dinner I said, ‘There’s no way I’d work for these guys’”) to president of Amazon.
“Jeff Bezos, who I hit it off with in 1999, was looking for a president. He and I hit it off, I still talk to him, he’s an outstanding guy, it was just a bridge too far for me,” Dimon recalled.
“I didn’t necessarily fully understand the business, I’d have to move my family to Seattle,” he added, but: “I loved the idea of never having to put a suit on again and getting a houseboat somewhere.”
In June 1999, Amazon named Joseph Galli as its president and COO, after Galli made the move from power tools supplier Black & Decker.
Home Depot came close
The man paid $39 million for his work in 2024 said the company which tempted him the most to leave the financial sector was DIY giant, Home Depot.
A far cry from FiDi, Dimon nonetheless hit it off with the team at the Georgia-based giant.
“Home Depot, I love those people,” the Harvard Business alum said. “When I first met them, I said: ‘Just so you guys know, I want you to know this, until you called me I’d never been in a Home Depot. So it’s not my natural habitat.’
“They were very much like, ‘We don’t care about that, you’ll learn, we want the guy with the heart and the soul.’”
Dimon, 68, got as far as visiting Home Depot stores and drawing up plans for moving.
“I actually shopped houses in Atlanta—we were taking it seriously—looked at schools for the kids,” Dimon continued.
When the call came from embattled Bank One, Dimon admits speculators may have been “surprised” by his move to take on the Chicago-based lender.
“I put half my net worth into it at the time, I tied my shoes to it—I was going to go with the ship or not,” he added.
