Jamie Dimon’s Succession Race Just Lost a Top Candidate

Jamie Dimon, who turns 69 in March, will one day retire as chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. The candidates to succeed him have been well advertised. Yet any slight change in the state of the race, like we saw Tuesday, unfailingly generates excitement and speculation about who, how and, most importantly, when the next leader will become known.

The latest development saw Jennifer Piepszak, co-head of the corporate and investment bank since last year, promoted to chief operating officer, taking over from Daniel Pinto, who plans to retire by the end of 2026 after more than four decades with the bank. Piepszak will become sole COO by the middle of this year, but Pinto will stay around to advise and consult with Dimon and the business heads for 18 months. Alas, Piepszak, 54, doesn’t want to be the bank’s next CEO. “Her clear preference is for a senior operating role working closely with Jamie and in support of top leadership going forward,” Bloomberg News reported spokesman Joe Evangelisti as saying.

Investors might gasp or fret that their preferred candidate is out of the running, and that the race to succeed Dimon has been upended. But there seems no cause for alarm. The plan remains the same; it’s just that one of the names on the succession list has changed.

To be honest, Piepszak was my pick for who would triumph. All the candidates are highly competent and experienced, most of them across several areas of the bank. But for me, Piepszak seemed the one who could most naturally hold a room while speaking and presenting. That might seem a superficial judgement, but such an ability remains a critical skill for a leader, even in an increasingly technology driven industry. JPMorgan still has more than 300,000 people working on its main-street branches across the US and offices around the world.