What happens when CEO Jamie Dimon leaves?

As Wall Street’s top bankers gathered in New York last month, preparing to convince Elon Musk’s SpaceX that they should be tapped to lead its upcoming initial public offering, one company wasn’t letting its star advisor miss out on the bread.

Among the band JPMorgan Chase The investment bankers who traveled 2,500 miles west to California to pitch to SpaceX were the head of the lender, billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon, people familiar with the trip told CNBC.

The morning after that meeting, on December 19, Dimon was already back in his usual early Friday spot: sitting in the lobby of his New York bank, holding meetings in full view of the thousands of employees streaming through the building’s turnstiles.

The past few days highlight the reality of Dimon’s singular influence on JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank by market capitalization.

Dimon celebrates his 20th anniversary as CEO this month, and remains deeply involved in the sprawling business of JPMorgan, a giant across Wall Street and Main Street with $4.6 trillion in assets. Six executives in investment banking, asset management and consumer banking echoed this view.

Which makes the inevitable questions surrounding Damon’s position loom as he approaches 70. Damon has maintained for years, somewhat cynically, that his retirement was always 5 years away. In 2024, he acknowledged for the first time that the window was shrinking.

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

“Given his track record, anyone else would have their credit rating downgraded,” said Ben Mackovac, a member of the bank’s board of directors and an investor through his firm, Strategic Value Bank Partners.

“I’m sure someone else can grow into this role and surprise people,” Mackovac said. “But on day one, no one will be as qualified to run this bank as Jimmy.”

Within two decades, Dimon had taken over a mid-sized US bank and, with his unique combination of judgement, megalomania, attention to detail and scope of vision, created a finance juggernaut the likes of which the world had never seen before.

During calm times, he invested aggressively for the future, and during periods of turmoil, such as 2008 and 2023, he avoided the pitfalls that consumed other banks, allowing him to buy three failed institutions.

Over the past 20 years, the bank’s annual net income has risen more than 500%, reaching $58.5 billion in 2024. The company reports full-year 2025 results on Tuesday.

Now, with a market capitalization of about $900 billion, JPMorgan is worth nearly as much as the next three largest U.S. banks combined: bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

Along with running JPMorgan, Dimon has taken on a senior role in global finance as the loudest voice explaining market volatility or emerging risks and influencing regulators amid policy shifts. It was Dimon’s recession warning in a Fox News segment in April that helped convince President Donald Trump to focus on his trade policy, sparking a historic relief wave.

“It’s the aura he has and the credibility he’s built in the markets,” said Chris Wolf, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The minute you step out of that role, it’s not like you can hand that over, where your successor doesn’t automatically inherit that. I think that’s the real challenge.”

The question of who could take over for Dimon — who was already a cancer survivor when he nearly died in 2020 from a ruptured aorta — has been openly debated among investors for more than a decade.

For investors, his most likely successor is currently Marian Lake, president of the company’s consumer bank giant and former CFO of the company, followed by Doug Pitno and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-heads of the company’s commercial and investment bank.

Other contenders include Asset & Wealth Management head Mary Erdos and CFO Jeremy Barnum.

“If investors took a preliminary poll today, they would probably choose Marian,” said Brian Foran, an analyst at Truist Bank.

“The running joke is that it’s a human supercomputer when it comes to banking,” Foran said. “In fact, the only question mark people have about her is that she’s so analytical, can she do this kind of thing to inspire a sales team?”

Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo, assumed that JPMorgan shares could immediately fall 5% if Dimon suddenly exited, regardless of the specific alternative. (The bank said Dimon will serve as chairman even after relinquishing the CEO role.)

It’s a fairly common occurrence on Wall Street for companies with prominent CEOs: stock premiums shrink, at least for a while, when their longtime leaders announce their departures. For example, Berkshire Hathaway Stocks lagged Standard & Poor’s 500 Last year after Warren Buffett announced that he would step down as CEO.

When asked about CEO succession, JPMorgan executives said Dimon is more committed to the job than ever and is unlikely to step down soon.

Depending on how long he stays in office, that means it’s not necessarily his current direct reports like Lake, Pitno and Rohrbaugh who are in line, but more junior executives are now being groomed and evaluated for leadership roles, they told CNBC.

“It’s too much work to imagine that day without him,” a JPMorgan executive, who requested anonymity, said of his boss. “If he stays to be 85, his direct reports won’t be the ones next in line, maybe a level or two below today.”

“Does it leave a big void? Yes,” the executive said. “But it’s not fatal, because we were planning it. I think there are groups of people who together can achieve the same result.”

The commercial bank CEO and former JPMorgan executive, who described Dimon as a mentor, said he did not believe Dimon would step down soon.

“Jimmy would never resign,” said the CEO, who requested anonymity to speak frankly. “What else would he do where he’s as important as he is now? His friends are all people from work. He likes it.”

However, beyond the day-to-day running of the 318,000-employee company, Dimon seems intent on building the JPMorgan bank of the future without him.

In recent months, Dimon oversaw the completion of the bank’s new $3 billion headquarters in downtown Manhattan and announced a $1.5 trillion initiative to support industries vital to U.S. interests.

Perhaps most importantly, he continues to instill his values ​​into the company’s management team.

Last year, at a conference of JPMorgan’s top 400 executives, Dimon rattled off a list of once-great companies that had died because of mismanagement. Finance is particularly vulnerable to this threat, he said, because of the temptation to manipulate numbers for short-term gain.

“Travelers exploded. Citi exploded twice. Bear Stearns failed, Lehman failed, and I’m here because the first bank screwed up a bunch of companies,” Dimon said, referring to a former JPMorgan firm.

“If you look at these things, it’s complacency, it’s bureaucracy, it’s arrogance. A lot of it is dishonest numbers. The failure to set standards,” Dimon said. “These are the cancers that kill companies.”

No one knows when Damon’s last day as CEO will come, but he knows it’s getting close. After modifying his standard 5-year retirement answer to hint at an early departure, Damon did not advance this hour any further.

“As great as he is, he can’t do this forever,” said Jason Goldberg, a banking analyst at Barclays. “Every day that passes, you are a day closer to the end.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Curtis contributed to this report.