What happens when CEO Jamie Dimon leaves?

As Wall Street’s top bankers gathered in New York last month and prepared to convince Elon Musk’s SpaceX that they should be chosen to lead its upcoming IPO, one firm wasn’t letting its star advisor miss the preliminary preparations.

Among the staff JPMorgan Chase Billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon said he had investment bankers flying 2,500 miles west to California to explain that SpaceX was the lender’s boss, people with knowledge of the trip told CNBC.

The morning after that Dec. 19 pitch meeting, Dimon was back in his usual spot early Friday: sitting in his bank’s New York lobby, attending meetings in full view of thousands of employees passing through the building’s turnstiles.

A whirlwind few days reveal the reality of Dimon’s unparalleled influence over JPMorgan, the world’s largest bank by market value.

Dimon celebrated his 20th anniversary as CEO this month and remains deeply involved in the expanding business of JPMorgan, a Wall Street and Main Street behemoth with $4.6 trillion in assets. A half-dozen executives in investment banking, asset management and consumer banking echoed that view.

This raises inevitable questions about Dimon’s tenure as he approaches 70 years old. For years, Dimon has consistently claimed, somewhat facetiously, that he is five years away from retirement. He acknowledged for the first time in 2024 that the window is getting smaller.

Will JPMorgan’s era of dominance end when Dimon steps down as CEO?

“Given his background, someone else might be downgraded,” he said Ben MackovakA bank board member and investor through his company Strategic Value Bank Partners.

“I’m sure someone else could take on this role and surprise people,” Mackovak said. “But no one will be more qualified to run that bank on day one than Jamie.”

In two decades, Dimon took a middling American lender and, with his unique combination of judgment, paranoia, attention to detail, and scope of vision, created a financial monster the world had never seen before.

It invested aggressively in the future during calm times, allowing it to close three failing institutions while avoiding the pitfalls that consumed other banks during turbulent times like 2008 and 2023.

Over the last 20 years, the bank’s annual net income has increased by over 500%, reaching $58.5 billion in 2024. The company announced its full year 2025 results on Tuesday.

Currently, with a market cap of nearly $900 billion, JPMorgan is worth almost as much as the next three largest US banks combined: Bank of America, citigroup And WellsFargo.

In addition to running JPMorgan, Dimon has taken on an outsized role in global finance as a senior voice explaining market turns or emerging risks and influencing regulators during policy changes. Dimon’s recession warning on a Fox News segment in April sparked a historic relief rally by persuading President Donald Trump to pivot to trade policy.

“It’s just the aura he has and the credibility he’s built in the markets,” the Fitch Ratings analyst said. Chris Wolfe. “Once you step out of that role, you can’t just pass that on, your successor doesn’t automatically inherit that. I think that’s the real challenge.”

The question of who could replace Dimon, who was already cancer-free when he died almost died A development from aortic rupture in 2020 – which has been openly discussed among investors for more than a decade.

His most likely successor, according to investors, is now Lake MariannePresident of the company’s giant consumer bank and former CFO of the company, then Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-heads of the firm’s commercial and investment banking.

Other contenders include head of wealth and asset management Mary Erdoes and CFO Jeremy Barnum.

“If investors were to take a poll today, they would probably choose Marianne,” Truist bank analyst said Brian Foran.

“The joke is that he’s a human supercomputer when it comes to banking,” Foran said. “Really, the only question people have about him is, is he so analytical, can he do the kind of ‘rah-rah’ things that will inspire the sales team?”

Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo suggested that if Dimon were to leave suddenly, JPMorgan shares could immediately fall 5% regardless of the name change. (The bank said Dimon will serve as chairman even after he relinquishes the CEO role.)

This is a fairly common occurrence on Wall Street for companies with iconic CEOs: Stock premiums shrink, at least for a while, when companies with longtime leaders announce their departures. For example, Berkshire Hathaway followed the shares S&P 500 Last year, after Warren Buffett said he would step down as CEO.

When asked about the CEO’s successor, JPMorgan executives say Dimon is as committed as ever and is unlikely to resign anytime soon.

Depending on how long he stays there, that means current direct reports like Lake, Petno and Rohrbaugh aren’t necessarily next in line, but more junior executives are now being groomed and considered for leadership roles, they told CNBC.

“There’s a lot of work to be done to imagine that day without him,” said a JPMorgan executive who asked not to be identified speaking about his boss. “If he stays until he’s 85, it won’t be his direct reports that are next, maybe it will be a level or two down from today.”

“Does it leave a big gap? Yes,” the manager said. “It’s not fatal, though, because we were planning for it. I think there are combinations of people that together could create the same outcome.”

The commercial bank CEO and former JPMorgan executive, who described Dimon as a mentor, also said he did not think Dimon would resign anytime soon.

“Jamie will never give up,” said the CEO, who asked to remain anonymous to speak openly. “What else would he do where it’s as important as it is now? His friends are all people from work. He loves it.”

Yet beyond the day-to-day management of a company with 318,000 employees, Dimon seems determined to set JPMorgan up for a future without him.

In recent months, Dimon has overseen the completion of $3 billion in new financing for the bank. It is headquartered in midtown Manhattan and has announced a $1.5 trillion initiative to support industries vital to U.S. interests.

last year one conference Dimon listed once-great companies that died of mismanagement for JPMorgan’s top 400 executives. He said finance is particularly prone to this threat due to its tendency to manipulate numbers for short-term gain.

“The Travelers got blown up. Citi got blown up twice. Bear Stearns failed, Lehman failed, I’m here because Bank One failed a bunch of businesses,” Dimon said, referring to a firm before JPMorgan.

“When you look at these things, it’s indifference, it’s bureaucracy, it’s arrogance. A lot of it is dishonest numbers. It’s a failure to set standards,” Dimon said. “These are the cancers that are killing companies.”

No one knows when Dimon’s last day as CEO will come, except that it’s getting closer. Dimon did not advance the clock any further after adjusting his standard five-year retirement response to imply he would leave sooner.

“No matter how great he is, he can’t do this forever,” Barclays banking analyst said Jason Goldberg. “Every day that passes, you get one day closer to the end.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.