In your hour of need, whom do you turn to? Your spouse? Your shrink? New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady?
For Jamie Dimon, the downtrodden CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who was dealing with the fallout from an itty bitty trading mistake in his bank’s chief investment office, the choice was clear. When times get tough, you need Tom on your side.
After spending much of July 13 again explaining the [London Whale] trading loss to the media and to research analysts…the exhausted Dimon got an unexpected call from Tom Brady, the star quarterback of the New England Patriots. ([JPMorgan vice chairman] Jimmy Lee, a legendary sports fan, had arranged for it.) Brady reminded Dimon that even Super Bowl champs have bad days and told him “to hang in there.” “I was surprised he even knew who I was, to tell you the truth,” Dimon says.
Other notable tidbits from Vanity Fair’s Dimon profile include the fact that Dimon was once “seriously considered” as the CEO of Home Depot after Sandy Weill fired him from Citigroup; the revelation that he wore a Vineyard Vines polo (logo: a whale) on his cross-country listening tour to apologize for the London Whale mess; and the fact that his plans for retirement may include “owning a Cheers-like bar on the Upper East Side.”
And, of course, the profile has what no post-Whale JPMorgan story can go without: a “Dimon in the Rough” pun.
