Jamie Dimon and Succession Planning at JP Morgan - Essay Example

In the case of JPMorgan, the post of Chairman and CEO is being held by Jamie Dimon, giving rise to controversial as well as key points of discussion. Thus, the discussion will be regarding JPMorgan’s organizational structure and corporate governance, particularly whether Dimon can have both the jobs and whether that arrangement can serve the company as well as shareholders, how it can impact knowledge management and also search for the new successor. As pointed out above, when compared to most publicly held companies, JP Morgan is following the structure of keeping or appointing a single person for the two key leadership posts of Chairman and CEO, in the form of Jamie Dimon.

While Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc “reached an agreement with an investor last year to drop a proposal for an independent chairman after giving expanded responsibilities to its lead independent director”, Kennett Lewis of Bank of America Corp. could not hold on to the dual posts as the “investors voted to strip the chairman’s title in the aftermath of the Merrill Lynch & Co. takeover and federal bailout.” (Kopecki, 2013). When one focuses on Dimon’s, he entered JPMorgan, albeit in an indirect manner, in early 2000s when JPMorgan acquired Bank One, in which Dimon was the Chairman as well as the CEO.

After acquisition and the resultant merger, Dimon became the President as well as COO of the combined company. Then, in 2005, he was appointed as the CEO of JPMorgan Chase and then a year later, he became the chairman of the board. (“Board of Directors”, n. d). From that time, he has been holding the dual posts, and although he has been performing well, certain events in the recent past led to questions being raised regarding the effectiveness of Dimon holding both the key leadership posts.

The key event that raised the pitch against him was the JPMorgan’s $6 billion trading losses in London dubbed as ‘London