Jamie Dimon, the billionaire boss of JPMorgan Chase, is getting a little bit richer. He was paid $31.5 million for 2020. And this is after the man actually lamented how much corporate leaders are overpaid.
The salary constitutes a 1.6% pay increase over 2018 and it is the same as his compensation for 2019.
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But JPMorgan shares fell 8% in 2020, understandable considering that last year the world economies plummeted because of the Coronavirus. Because of that the firm had warned its employees that they would receive much lower bonuses for the year. So observers wonder why Mr. Dimon did not need to take even a slight pay cut. Forbes estimates Dimon’s net worth at $1.7 billion. The 64 year old took over the leadership of JPMorgan in 2005.
JPMorgan stated that, “In determining Mr. Dimon’s compensation, the independent members of the Board took into account the Firm’s strong performance in 2020 and over the long term, across four broad dimensions: business results; risk, controls & conduct; client/customer/stakeholder; and teamwork & leadership.”
And the firm did report a record full-year revenue totaling $122.9 billion with a net income of $29.1 billion, or $8.88 per share.
Not that long ago Jamie Dimon spoke to 60 Minutes in an interview about what he then felt was a problem with the huge compensations paid to company CEOs.
“A big chunk of [people] have been left behind,” he told the news program. “Forty per cent of Americans make less than $15 an hour. Forty percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car. Fifteen per cent of Americans make minimum wages, 70,000 die from opioids [annually].”
Whatever one’s feelings on the subject of executive pay, now, with a democrat in the White House and a democratic controlled Congress, it may not be such a good PR move for Jamie Dimon to take in such a large pay day. And countless Americans are scrambling to pay the rent because of the coronavirus recession.
Donald Trump granted huge tax cuts to the extremely wealthy and firms like JPMorgan when he first took office saying that the money would trickle down to the general public. Critics say that it did not. The public might use this as a wedge to push the democrats into undoing at least some of those tax cuts if they feel that it just went to big pay outs to billionaires.
