By Robin Sidel And Emily Glazer
Another former top executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is
getting a corner office of his own.
British bank Standard Chartered PLC on Thursday named Bill
Winters its next chief executive officer, making him the latest
former deputy to J.P. Morgan CEO James Dimon to land the top job at
a major financial firm. Other former J.P. Morgan executives now run
credit-card company Visa Inc.; payments processor First Data Corp.;
and PNC Financial Services Group Inc., one of the nation's largest
regional banks.
For Mr. Dimon, leader of the largest U.S. bank by assets, his
firm's emergence as a top breeding ground is both a blessing and a
curse, highlighting his firm's ability to develop talent as well as
the uncertainty surrounding J.P. Morgan's succession plan.
J.P. Morgan hasn't named a successor to Mr. Dimon, who turns 59
next month and was diagnosed with throat cancer last summer. After
going through a course of treatment, Mr. Dimon told bank employees
in December that tests showed no evidence of cancer in his
body.
J.P. Morgan isn't the first company that has seen its executives
rise to the top of the firm only to jump ship.
"If Jamie is going to aspire to be the best global bank in the
universe, he's going to lose good people, and he has lost good
people," said former McKinsey & Co. head Ron Daniel, who ran
the consulting firm from 1976 to 1988 and has spoken with Mr. Dimon
about top executives inevitably leaving leading firms.
Mr. Daniel said other companies that have wrestled with this in
past years include Procter & Gamble Co., International Business
Machines Corp. and General Electric Co.
GE perhaps provides the best corollary. The conglomerate was led
by Jack Welch for two decades, and he became closely identified
with the company's image, just as Mr. Dimon has at J.P. Morgan.
The planning for Mr. Welch's exit began with a list of 23
internal candidates seven years before he left, eventually pitting
Jeffrey Immelt against fellow executives Robert Nardelli and Jim
McNerney.
The process, lauded by many outsiders, proved internally
divisive. Messrs. Nardelli and McNerney each announced they were
leaving to take CEO positions at other companies within 10 days of
being informed by Mr. Welch, at the end of a Thanksgiving weekend,
that Mr. Immelt was getting the top job.
At J.P. Morgan, Mr. Winters was out of the running to succeed
Mr. Dimon long ago.
Mr. Winters, who was based in London, wasn't a close ally of Mr.
Dimon, and Mr. Dimon wasn't a guiding force in his career. Mr.
Winters rose through the ranks of J.P. Morgan predecessors over 26
years and was a senior executive there when Mr. Dimon joined the
bank in 2004.
Mr. Winters earned $20.2 million at J.P. Morgan in 2007, making
him the second-highest paid executive at the bank, according to a
financial filing.
Ultimately, Mr. Dimon ousted Mr. Winters from the bank in 2009
after the pair repeatedly clashed and Mr. Winters had a falling out
with another senior executive, according to people familiar with
the matter. Mr. Winters had chafed under Mr. Dimon's leadership,
frustrated by what he regarded as the bank's overly risky
investment strategies and what he believed was Mr. Dimon's
imperialistic management style, according to people familiar with
their relationship.
Furthermore, Mr. Winters had hoped to succeed Mr. Dimon in the
CEO post, but Mr. Dimon, in his early 50s at the time, and the
board weren't willing to tap him for the job, these people
said.
After leaving J.P. Morgan, Mr. Winters was considered for a
number of bank CEO jobs, according to people familiar with the
matter, but instead set up an asset-management firm to buy assets
that were expected to be sold by downsizing banks.
The two rarely have spoken since Mr. Winters left J.P. Morgan,
but Mr. Dimon called Mr. Winters on Thursday to congratulate him on
the new job, according to people familiar with the
conversation.
"I enjoyed working with Bill for years, and I have high respect
for him, " Mr. Dimon said in an interview Thursday. "It's a great
choice for the role at Standard Chartered, and he'll do a really
good job."
Other high-level departures from J.P. Morgan in recent years
include longtime executives who were part of Mr. Dimon's inner
circle dating back to their early careers at the predecessor of
Citigroup Inc. in the 1980s.
Among them are Charles Scharf, who oversaw J.P. Morgan's
retail-banking business and now runs Visa and counts J.P. Morgan
among its biggest customers; Frank Bisignano, who ran J.P. Morgan's
operations, is the CEO of First Data; and former J.P. Morgan Chief
Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh, once viewed as a potential
successor to Mr. Dimon, who left the bank last year to join Carlyle
Group LP as co-president and co-chief operating officer.
"This speaks to the quality of the management team that J.P.
Morgan had at one time and still has," said Steve Black, a Wall
Street veteran who ran J.P. Morgan's investment bank with Mr.
Winters. He is now co-CEO of Bregal Investments, the private-equity
arm of a European holding company.
J.P. Morgan has said its executives work closely with the board
on succession planning. Among those considered candidates to
succeed Mr. Dimon are retail head Gordon Smith and asset-management
chief Mary Callahan Erdoes, people familiar with the succession
planning have said. Other candidates include Chief Operating
Officer Matt Zames; Doug Petno, chief of the commercial bank;
Daniel Pinto, chief of the corporate and investment bank; and
Marianne Lake, chief financial officer, these people said.
Citigroup was regarded for many years as one of Wall Street's
top training grounds for financial executives. The mantle then
passed to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which saw a number of senior
executives leave to run companies, including Duncan Niederauer to
the New York Stock Exchange and John Thain to lender CIT Group Inc.
Mr. Thain also was CEO of Merrill Lynch and the NYSE.
David Enrich contributed to this article.
Access Investor Kit for Standard Chartered Plc
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=GB0004082847
Access Investor Kit for CIT Group, Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US1255818015
Access Investor Kit for The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US38141G1040
Access Investor Kit for International Business Machines
Corp.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US4592001014
Access Investor Kit for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US46625H1005
Access Investor Kit for KKR & Co. LP
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US48248M1027
Access Investor Kit for The PNC Financial Services Group,
Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US6934751057
Access Investor Kit for Visa, Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US92826C8394
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires