Jaime Dimon, hesitant to help the federal government this time around after being treated so badly by the federal government after investing billions in WAMU in 2008, from yesterdays NYT:
"But before talk turned to the war, Mr. Ackman sought out the one person in the room who he thought might have a solution to SVB: Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.
Mr. Ackman asked Mr. Dimon, who had led the rescue of two banks during the 2008 financial crisis, if he would consider buying Silicon Valley Bank, according to two dinner attendees.
Not this time, Mr. Dimon said.
"During the financial crisis of 2008, when Bear Stearns collapsed under the weight of toxic assets on its balance sheet, JPMorgan bought it for $10 a share under the supervision of regulators. Later that year, Mr. Dimon agreed to buy Washington Mutual, then the largest U.S. savings and loan. Those two deals allowed him to build JPMorgan into a behemoth.
Mr. Dimon is the only current chief executive of a big bank to have held that position during the 2008 financial crisis, giving him a long history with federal regulators and officials at the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
He is "acting as a senior statesperson who is helping to shore up the financial industry in a time of crisis of confidence," said Mike Mayo, a longtime banking analyst. "With that comes potentially higher prestige but also potential backlash."
Although Mr. Dimon got a lot of publicity for orchestrating the $30 billion rescue plan for First Republic, he was hardly acting solely of his own volition. Both in 2008 and this month, the JPMorgan boss acted at the behest of the federal government.
"When the Treasury secretary suggests you do this, you have to think pretty hard before saying no," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor who has written on financial crises.
Still, Mr. Dimon was so scarred by his experience of the 2008 financial crisis that he lamented frequently about the billions of dollars in legal fees that JPMorgan saw in that era. For years after the acquisitions of Bear and WaMu, JPMorgan fought -- and eventually paid -- fines related to the new subsidiaries' prior conduct. In his 2014 letter to shareholders, Mr. Dimon called those deals "expensive lessons that I will not forget."
Those memories weighed heavily on his actions this time around. Even as he hashed out a plan with regulators and other bankers, Mr. Dimon made sure there was little chance JPMorgan would lose money or face."
AI
