JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recovering after emergency heart surgery
Dimon, 63, experienced an “acute aortic dissection” — a tear in the inner lining of the aorta blood vessel — requiring surgery Thursday morning.
“The good news is that it was caught early and the surgery was successful,” Pinto and Smith said in the letter. “He is awake, alert and recovering well.”
Dimon is one the most powerful men on Wall Street. He has been CEO of JPMorgan since 2005, and chairman of the board since 2006.
“Jamie Dimon is the literal JPMorgan of the modern world,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, management professor at Yale University, told CNN Business. “There is no more feared or revered person today in the world of finance than Jamie Dimon.”
In their letter, Smith and Pinto, who are also co-presidents at JPMorgan, said they have worked “hand-in-hand” with Dimon to lead the company over the past two years.
“We have also been deeply involved in all of the critical firmwide functions,” they said.
“He has built up an incredible bench strength beneath him continually,” Sonnenfeld said. “Gordon Smith has the Jamie Dimon gift of clarity and wit. They are in fantastic hands in terms of next generational cohort.”
Dimon’s health has been a concern in the past.
“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but at one point it’s right here and you realize it’s true and it’s true maybe sooner than you think,” Dimon said. “And so it’s nice to end every day by saying, ‘That was a good day.’ Every meeting, that was a good meeting. Every week, that was a good week.”
The health scare also comes at a delicate time for JPMorgan and Wall Street.