If you want to know how well JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon is doing, just ask an old guy?
And no, I’m not kidding.
This week, Laban Jackson, board member of JPM, defended Dimon with Bloomberg quoting him as saying:
“He’s the best manager I’ve ever seen, and I’m old,” Jackson, 71, said yesterday at the National Association of Corporate Directors’ annual conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland. “He has, as we all do, flaws.”
As for his thoughts on the company’s current legal troubles, Bloomberg added the following from its conversation with Jackson:
JPMorgan agreed to pay $920 million in penalties last month to settle probes of a multibillion-dollar trading loss, one of myriad woes that forced the New York-based lender to set aside $28 billion for legal costs since early 2010. The debacle was caused by a group of “renegades” inside the chief investment office who thought they had found the perfect trade, said Jackson, who heads the audit committee.
“People get to smoking their own dope,” Jackson said. “I’m sure there was some hubris involved.”
