Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently recalled how he had faced an impossible situation during the 2008 financial crisis. At a time when it felt like the entire global economy was spiraling out of control, Dimon was given a choice to either come up with $30 billion or let the company's Asia wing go bankrupt.
The 68-year-old opened up on the How Leaders Lead podcast recently and shared how the company averted the crisis. "I knew that if the sh*t had hit the fan early on, we would've had a real problem," Benzinga quoted Dimon as saying.
On March 13, 2008, Dimon was at a Greek restaurant with his parents when he received a call from the CEO of investment banking company Bear Stearns. Alan Schwartz was in full panic mode: "Jamie, I need $30 billion tonight, otherwise we're going to go bankrupt in Asia in the morning," he reportedly said.
"Even I said, ‘Alan, I don't even know how to get $30 billion'," Dimon said on the podcast, adding that he immediately called his senior team with a simple directive: "Get dressed and go to the office." His order had hundreds of JPMorgan employees at their desks in hours, analysing Bear Stearns's books line by line. "We did six months of work in two days, and bought Bear Stearns that night," Dimon said. "That kind of thing is the moment where you're breathless."
He added that before the crisis, the senior team's risk committee met once a week. But when markets collapsed, the team "was meeting five times a day, every day, for a year". "And I mean, every day. I mean going to 10 pm and 5 am because you had Asia—we had to be up for that," Dimon said.
The JPMorgan CEO also revealed that under the tremendous pressure, he witnessed firsthand who could handle stress and who couldn't. "Some people are great, and some are just children," he said.
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