What will happen when CEO Jamie Dimon leaves?

As Wall Street’s top bankers gathered in New York last month, preparing to convince Elon Musk’s SpaceX that they should be chosen to lead its upcoming IPO, one company wasn’t letting its star adviser miss the kickoff.

Among the team of JPMorgan Chase The investment bankers traveling 2,500 miles west to California to pitch SpaceX were the lender’s boss, billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon, people with knowledge of the trip told CNBC.

The day after that introductory meeting, December 19, Dimon was already back at his usual Friday morning job: sitting in the lobby of his New York bank, taking meetings in full view of the thousands of employees crowding the building’s turnstiles.

These whirlwind few days highlight the reality of Dimon’s singular impact on JPMorgan, the world’s largest bank by market capitalization.

Dimon celebrates his 20th anniversary as CEO this month and remains deeply involved in the sprawling operations of JPMorgan, a Wall Street and Main Street giant with $4.6 trillion in assets. Half a dozen executives from the investment banking, asset management and consumer banking industries echoed this view.

The inevitable questions surrounding Dimon’s mandate therefore arise as he approaches the age of 70. Dimon has maintained for years, somewhat ironically, that his retirement was perpetually five years away. In 2024, he recognized for the first time that this window was narrowing.

Will JPMorgan’s era of dominance be over when Dimon steps down as CEO?

“Given his track record, anyone else would see his rating downgraded,” said Ben Mackovak, a bank board member and investor through his firm Strategic Value Bank Partners.

“I’m sure someone else could take on this role and surprise people,” Mackovak said. “But from day one, no one will be as qualified as Jamie to lead this bank.”

Over two decades, Dimon turned to a mid-tier American lender and, with his unique combination of judgment, paranoia, attention to detail and vision, created a financial juggernaut the world had never seen before.

In calm times, he invested aggressively for the future, and during tumultuous times, such as in 2008 and 2023, he avoided the pitfalls that have beset other banks, allowing him to buy three failed institutions.

Over the past 20 years, the bank’s annual net profit has soared more than 500% to $58.5 billion in 2024. The company reports full-year 2025 results on Tuesday.

Today, with a market capitalization of around $900 billion, JPMorgan is worth almost as much as the three largest US banks combined: Bank of America, Citi Group And Wells Fargo.

In addition to leading JPMorgan, Dimon has taken on an outsized role in global finance as a leading spokesperson explaining market fluctuations or emerging risks and influencing regulators during policy changes. It was Dimon’s recession warning on a Fox News segment in April that helped convince President Donald Trump to change his trade policies, sparking a historic relief rally.

“It’s just the aura that he has, the credibility that he’s built in the markets,” said Chris Wolfe, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “As soon as you leave that role, it’s not like you can just pass it on, your successor won’t automatically inherit it. I think that’s the real challenge.”

The question of who might succeed Dimon — who was already a cancer survivor when he nearly died in 2020 from a ruptured aorta — has been openly discussed among investors for more than a decade.

For investors, his most likely successor currently is Marianne Lake, head of the company’s giant consumer bank and former CFO of the company, followed by Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-heads of the company’s commercial and investment banking.

Other contenders include Mary Erdoes, director of asset and wealth management, and Jeremy Barnum, chief financial officer.

“If investors were to take a quick poll today, they would probably choose Marianne,” said Truist Bank analyst Brian Foran.

“The running joke is that she’s a human supercomputer when it comes to banking,” Foran said. “Really, the only question mark people have about her is: She’s so analytical, can she do the ‘rah-rah’ kind of stuff to inspire the sales force?”

Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo speculated that JPMorgan’s stock could immediately fall 5% if Dimon were to suddenly exit, regardless of the designated replacement. (The bank said Dimon would serve as chairman even after giving up the CEO role.)

It’s a fairly common phenomenon on Wall Street for companies with iconic CEOs: the stock premium declines, at least for a while, when their long-time leaders announce their departure. For example, Berkshire Hathaway the actions followed the S&P500 last year, after Warren Buffett announced he was stepping down as CEO.

Asked about CEO succession, JPMorgan executives say Dimon is as hot as ever and is unlikely to resign anytime soon.

Depending on the length of his stay, that means it’s not necessarily his current direct reports, like Lake, Petno and Rohrbaugh, who are in line, but more junior executives currently being trained and evaluated for leadership roles, they told CNBC.

“There’s a lot of work to do to imagine this day without him,” said a JPMorgan executive who asked to remain anonymous when speaking about his boss. “If he stays until he’s 85, it’s not his direct reports who will be next in line, it’s maybe one or two levels lower than today.”

“Does he leave a huge void? Yes,” the executive said. “It’s not fatal, though, because we planned for it. I think there are combinations of people who together can create the same outcome.”

The commercial bank CEO and former JPMorgan executive, who described Dimon as a mentor, also said he didn’t think Dimon would resign anytime soon.

“Jamie will never stop,” said the CEO, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “What else would he do where he’s as big as he is now? His friends are all work people. He loves it.”

However, beyond the daily management of a company of 318,000 employees, Dimon seems determined to found JPMorgan for a future without him.

In recent months, Dimon oversaw the completion of the bank’s new $3 billion headquarters in midtown Manhattan and announced a $1.5 trillion initiative to support industries crucial to American interests.

And, perhaps most importantly, he continues to instill his values ​​in the company’s leadership team.

Last year, at a conference of JPMorgan’s top 400 executives, Dimon rattled off a list of once-great companies that died because of poor management. Finance is particularly exposed to this threat, due to the temptation to manipulate numbers for short-term gains, he explained.

“Travelers blew up. Citi blew up twice. Bear Stearns failed, Lehman failed, I’m here because Bank One failed a bunch of companies,” Dimon said, referring to a predecessor company to JPMorgan.

“If you look at these things, it’s complacency, it’s bureaucracy, it’s arrogance. A lot of it is dishonest numbers. The failure to set standards,” Dimon said. “It’s cancers that kill businesses.”

No one knows when Dimon’s last day as CEO will come, except that it’s getting closer. After adjusting his standard five-year retirement response to hint at a quicker departure, Dimon did not move that timeline forward any further.

“As great as he is, he can’t do this forever,” said Jason Goldberg, a banking analyst at Barclays. “Every day that passes, you get a little closer to the end.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.