JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday the Wall Street giant could drop up to $20 billion on an acquisition, teeing up what would rank as the biggest deal of his 20-year run atop the country’s largest bank.
Dimon told analysts at a New York financial conference that JPMorgan is hunting for possible targets, saying the bank could put $10 billion to $20 billion to work over the next couple of years.
“I do think there might be opportunities, and so we are on the lookout,” he said at the forum organized by investment firm Bernstein.
The signal marks a sharp turn for a bank that prefers to grow from within. It also tees up a clash with regulators, who have soured on consolidation among the biggest US banks.
JPMorgan already tops the industry by assets — the combined value of its loans, investments, and other holdings — which stand at just over $4 trillion, according to its latest Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Any major purchase would draw scrutiny from lawmakers who argue the largest banks already pose risks to the broader economy. The Dimon-led lender is America’s biggest, and the fifth-largest worldwide.
Dimon set tight conditions for a potential deal. A target must slot into JPMorgan’s operations, mesh with its culture and strengthen existing businesses, he said, insisting that a possible purchase cannot chase a trend or sit on the sidelines as a stand-alone unit.
“It can’t be just a pie-in-the-sky type of thing,” Dimon said.
The longtime business leader also warned against buying companies to mask weak performance. Executives who lean on dealmaking, he suggested, often paper over trouble in their core business.
“You sit around a lot of management meetings, the first thing they do when they’re not doing well in organic growth is they start to bulls–t about [mergers and acquisitions],” the Queens native said.
“I don’t want to hear about M&A … What are you doing to grow your business — sales, branches, tech, profits, products, services?” he added.
The remarks stand out because Dimon has long resisted big takeovers outside emergencies. Since taking the top job in 2005, his largest deals have come when regulators asked JPMorgan to rescue failing rivals.
It swallowed Bear Stearns in March 2008 as the investment firm teetered. And it seized Washington Mutual’s banking operations that September.
In 2023, JPMorgan absorbed First Republic Bank after the San Francisco lender collapsed in a regional banking panic, paying $10.6 billion to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — the agency that insures bank deposits — to close the deal.
Between crises, Dimon has poured cash into technology, branches and new business lines rather than scooping up rivals.
His openness to a $20 billion purchase marks the clearest signal yet that he sees room to grow by acquisition.
Dimon did not name a possible target or flag any particular industry.
Federal law bars JPMorgan from buying other large deposit-taking banks, so any deal would likely land in an adjacent corner of finance, such as asset management, payments or financial technology firms that handle digital money transfers and other services.
The timing comes amid a broader squeeze. Smaller and mid-sized lenders have buckled under higher interest rates and rising compliance costs.
Several have shopped themselves to buyers or sought merger partners over the past two years.
A $20 billion price tag would rank among the largest US bank deals ever struck.
The First Republic rescue involved roughly $173 billion in loans, but the federal government engineered that transaction rather than JPMorgan pursuing it outright.
Dimon, a 70-year-old veteran who also serves as the company’s chairman, has not set a retirement date, and his eventual departure from the CEO role has been a constant topic of chatter on Wall Street over the past few years.
The bank has spent recent years grooming a bench of senior executives seen as possible successors, naming a string of them in its 2024 proxy filing.
Marianne Lake, who runs the consumer and community banking division, is widely seen as the leading candidate.
She oversees the retail arm, which runs checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and auto loans, and previously served as chief financial officer.
If chosen, she would join Citigroup’s Jane Fraser as one of the only women ever to run a major US bank.
Other names in the mix include Mary Erdoes, a longtime Dimon ally who runs the asset and wealth management line of business, steering trillions of dollars for institutions and wealthy clients.
Another is Troy Rohrbaugh, who co-leads the commercial and investment bank, JPMorgan’s trading and dealmaking engine. He climbed through the fixed-income ranks before reaching the executive suite.