Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase picked up $23.1 million (£14.5 million) last year — an 11% pay rise — the US bank’s annual report revealed today.
Dimon used his annual letter to shareholders — at a record 38 pages long — to lay into regulators in the US and globally for making the economic recovery “worse than it might have been”.
Dimon, 56, attacked US legislation which had been brought in after the financial crisis including the Durbin Amendment (on payment processing charges) and the Volcker Rule (stopping banks from proprietary trading). He said: “Complexity and confusion should have been alleviated, not compounded. We now have multiple regulatory agencies with overlapping rules and oversight responsibilities.”
On international regulation he said: “Basel III created additional ‘capital confusion’ as banks did not know what the specific capital rules would be going forward. The banks still don’t know exactly how much capital they will be required to hold, when the regulators would like the banks to get there and how they will be able to use their excess capital when they do get there.”
Dimon also defended the use of derivatives markets by banks, stating that clients needed them as much as bankers did. He said: “Many clients have a large need for derivatives to manage their exposures. Even more misunderstood than market making in stocks and bonds is derivatives. Ninety per cent of the global Fortune 500 companies actively use derivatives. They don’t use them because we want them to do so. They use them to manage their own exposures.”
As head of the largest US bank Dimon was paid a bonus of $4.5 million and given $17 million in stock and options on top of $1.4 million salary.
