In an interesting twist of fate, Lloyd Blankfein’s departure from Goldman Sachs, announced last week, leaves JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon as the lone survivor from the financial crisis. (Blankfein will officially retire Sept. 30.)
Dimon is the last banker standing on this, the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis beginning with the failure of Lehman Bros. on Sept. 15, 2008.
That set off a series of C-suite departures, including Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch (which was sold by then-CEO John Thain into Ken Lewis’ open arms at Bank of America), and Jimmy Cayne and Alan Schwartz at Bear Stearns after selling to Dimon. Vikram Pandit of Citibank left the bank, which is a markedly different institution today than it was in 2008. John Mack exited Morgan Stanley.
Dimon was able to steer his ship through the crisis and grow his business while others sank in the financial storm.
Ten years later, it is worth looking back on all the changes that have taken place.
A decade ago, the Street was playing a real-life game of “Survivor.”
And by the time the music stopped, there were two major-bank CEOs — Blankfein and Dimon — who made it all the way through the desperate weekend meetings at the New York Federal Reserve as it tried to shore up the financial sector. Goldman’s new CEO, David Solomon, was an investment banker who became COO under Blankfein’s stewardship when Gary Cohn left to become President Trump ’s chief economic adviser (a position he left earlier this year).
Dimon’s succession plan is on hold, since in January he re-upped for at least another five years.
Both Dimon and Blankfein posted great quarters this month, with JPMorgan recording $8.32 billion in profit, while Goldman offered up an equally impressive $2.3 billion of profit.
They’re doing a lot better than mere survival.