JPMorgan pays chief Dimon $34.5m after record profits in 2021

JPMorgan Chase paid longtime chief executive Jamie Dimon $34.5m for 2021, up $3m from the past two years and his biggest pay packet since 2008.

The increased pay came in a year in which JPMorgan, the largest US bank by assets, reported record profits and revenues. The results were driven by its investment bank, which raked in fees from a surge of corporate dealmaking, and by far lower losses from loans than anticipated during the pandemic.

In a regulatory filing on Thursday, JPMorgan said its board of directors determined Dimon’s pay by taking into account “the firm’s strong performance in 2021 and over the long term”. He was paid a base salary of $1.5m and a $33m performance-based bonus.

Dimon, 65, has led JPMorgan since 2005 and is the longest-serving chief executive of a big Wall Street bank. He was overtaken last year as the industry’s best-paid boss by Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, who earned $33m. Morgan Stanley has not yet disclosed Gorman’s pay for 2021.

In fourth-quarter earnings in the past week, five of Wall Street’s leading banks — JPMorgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America — disclosed they had handed out $142bn in total pay and benefits in 2021, up nearly 15 per cent from the previous year.

Earlier in 2021, JPMorgan granted Dimon a “special award” of share options projected to be worth about $49m, which the bank said reflected its board’s desire for him to stay on for a “significant number of years”.

Forbes estimates Dimon’s net worth at $1.8bn, much of which is held in JPMorgan stock.