Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), announced on Tuesday night that he has been diagnosed with throat cancer. “The good news is that the prognosis from my doctors is excellent, the cancer was caught quickly, and my condition is curable,” the 58-year-old Dimon said in a statement. “Importantly, there is no evidence of cancer elsewhere in my body.” Dimon said he would likely begin an eight-week course of radiation and chemotherapy treatments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.
Dimon was named chief executive of Bank One in 2000 and took the helm of JPMorgan after a 2004 merger. He became a household name during the 2008 financial crisis, a period that saw his bank absorb the failing Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual without posting a quarterly loss. Commentators lavished praise on his management.
Dimon drew another round of intense scrutiny, this time witheringly negative, in 2012 and 2013 as a result of a multibillion-dollar trading loss known as the “London Whale” episode. A series of multibillion-dollar settlements with the government followed in which JPMorgan settled charges of wrongdoing related to mortgages, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, and other activities.
Dimon said in his statement that his travel will be curtailed during treatment but that he will be “actively involved in our business, and we will continue to run the company as normal.”
Dimon has lost a number of key lieutenants recently, including investment bank co-CEO Mike Cavanagh, widely seen as a potential successor, who left in March; commodities head Blythe Masters, who departed in April; Frank Bisignano, a co-chief operating officer, who left in 2013; James Staley, another potential successor, in 2013; and other executives.
