 |
Bill Winters: Employees say he was the glue that held the various businesses together |
Only when his feet hit the pavement outside JPMorgan’s London headquarters on London Wall did the applause from the sixth floor begin to die down. For the many hundreds who had gathered to give him a rousing send-off, Bill Winters was their man. More crucially however, he was not chief executive Jamie Dimon’s man. In announcing his first official succession plan since becoming chief executive, Dimon removed Winters, his most senior executive outside the US, from the position of co-head of JPMorgan’s investment bank, its most profitable unit.
In his place he appointed Jes Staley, a 30-year Morgan veteran, who had spent the previous nine years managing the firm’s asset management division. Winters’ co-head and close friend Steve Black was appointed to the position of executive chairman of the investment bank, a role that will involve him organizing the transition of Staley into his new role. Black will then leave that position at the end of 2010. The reshuffle means that Staley will become the most likely to succeed Dimon should he step down as chief executive, although he hasn’t given any indication when that will be.