Jamie Dimon has run JPMorgan Chase since 2005. Two decades at the top of one bank is unusual anywhere; doing it while making that bank among the largest and most profitable in the world is why he is the most influential figure in global finance.
Crises made the reputation. JPMorgan came through the 2008 meltdown in better shape than most of its peers, and the phrase Dimon repeated throughout — fortress balance sheet — stopped being a slogan and became how the institution is actually run.
In every crisis, the same instinct: keep a fortress balance sheet, and be the bank still standing when the storm clears.
His annual shareholder letters wander well past banking into the economy, geopolitics, regulation and public policy. Presidents read them. That is a statesman's platform, not a chief executive's.
Succession is the question nobody in finance can stop asking, because he has been there so long that the bank and the man are difficult to separate. What he leaves behind is an institution built to survive — and a very loud argument about how capitalism ought to work.