Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, lamented recently when he talked about Wall Street going to outlast the Chinese Communist Party. The According to the Financial Times Damon already thought he shouldn’t have made that comment.
Damon then apologized for speaking to participants at a Boston business forum on Tuesday that he recently joked that someone had told him the Communist Party was celebrating its 100th birthday by the time he said he was like JPMorgan in China and would accept it. The bank will survive. Then Damon said he couldn’t say it in China, although he might still listen to what he had to say.
Photo: MANDEL NGAN / AFP
The JPMorgan chief had already distanced himself from his words in a statement on Wednesday, he just wants to emphasize the strength and longevity of their own company and shouldn’t put it that way.
Dimon’s comments came a week after the bank’s director visited Hong Kong for a day. This made him the first Wall Street bank manager to travel to China since the outbreak.
As the article notes, because global banks, also operating in China, derive a significant portion of their revenue from China, their CEOs in general are very cautious when it comes to speaking out about Chinese issues. In recent years, the leaders of several major banks have had to explain why they have manifested themselves in the sensitive issues of Beijing.
According to JPMorgan’s statement, Dimon realized that he should never speak lightly or disrespectfully about the leaders of one or another country, and that during the conversation, Dimon also made clear that the Chinese people are highly intelligent and attentive. The statement said the bank president is also committed to a constructive economic dialogue with China.
JPMorgan appeared in China only in 1921, the year the Chinese Communist Party was founded. This year, Chinese authorities gave the US-based giant the opportunity to operate as a wholly foreign-owned private investment bank in the country, something that had not been granted before to other Western banks.
