The Jamie Dimon Interview: How JP Morgan Became an $800 Billion Bank

David, we completely blew it. We went into Jamie Dimon's office, had our little meet and greet. We did not ask about the dual pistols.

Yeah, from the duel, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which J.P. Morgan owns and keeps in their headquarters, and we blew it. We didn't ask to see them. We'll just have to come back.

When they finish the new building, I'm sure they will be in the executive floor. We can go get a viewing of the, uh, you know, piece of American history.

All right, speaking of American history, let's do it.

Let's do it. [upbeat music]

Radio City! Are you ready? Who got the truth? Yeah. Is it you, is it you, is it you? Who got the truth now, now? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Take me down, say it straight. I want the story all the way. Who got the truth now, now? Who got the truth?

Welcome to the Summer 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

I'm David Rosenthal.

And we are your hosts. Today's episode is the story of a rising star on Wall Street in the 1980s, who worked with his mentor to merge and acquire their way to the top of the financial world in the '90s, who then got fired unexpectedly by that same mentor, who cast about deciding what to do next, and then in 2000, accepted a job turning around a poorly run Midwestern bank. Then, over the next twenty-five years, he would orchestrate one of the most remarkable runs in banking history, and really, all of corporate history. This is the story of Jamie Dimon, and how he created the modern financial behemoth, JPMorgan Chase, out of the beleaguered component parts of Bank One, JPMorgan Chase, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, and First Republic. Jamie is now the longest-serving CEO of any major Wall Street bank and is viewed as kind of the great stabilizer of the American financial system, especially during the 2008 financial crisis. He now sits atop the largest bank in the US with an over eight hundred billion dollar market cap, which is more than twice their nearest competitor. They are the only bank within spitting distance of the sort of big trillion-dollar tech companies that we've covered here on Acquired. And to really put a finer point on the dominance, they are the most valuable company east of the Mississippi in the United States, and the only company east of the Mississippi worth more than half a trillion dollars.

Incredible.

So the question, of course, is: how did he do it? I mean, banks fail. Financial firms often have spectacular blowups, and large organizations, period, financial or not, can often get so bloated that they slow down to a crawl. So what did Jamie Dimon do differently? Well, today's episode, we have Jamie with us, himself, to tell the story. We recorded this live in front of six thousand Acquired fans at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. So you'll notice it's a different format than our usual episode. We're always trying to figure out what version of Acquired works live with an audience, and this is our latest iteration. The Radio City show also had a second act, a late-night talk show, where we had conversations with the CEO of The New York Times, Meredith Kobett Levien, and the chairman of IAC, Barry Diller, plus some cameos from around the Acquired cinematic universe, and we cannot wait to share all of that with you at a later date. Well, if you want to know every time an episode drops, check out our email list, acquired.fm/email. Come join the Slack and talk about this with us afterwards, acquired.fm/slack. If you want more Acquired between each monthly episode, check out ACQ2, our interview show, where we talk with founders and CEOs building businesses in areas we've covered on the show. And before we dive in, we want to briefly thank our presenting partner, J.P. Morgan. [laughing]