Final 12 months was a curler coaster trip, however a market rebound has pushed mega banks’ inventory progress almost 30% and document compensation and bonuses are prone to observe.
Main the cost is JPMorgan Chase CEO and chairman Jamie Dimon, one of many final sitting Wall Avenue leaders to have navigated the 2008 monetary disaster, the following passage of the Dodd-Frank reform act, and now the AI increase. Dimon has spent the previous 20 years atop JPMorgan and is know for hardly ever cashing in his inventory. With that bent, he amassed an possession stake in JPMorgan of almost 8.5 million shares, and solely started shaving off his holdings in a small handful of pre-planned gross sales in 2024, starting with a sale valued at $150 million.
Dimon began off 2025 with about 7.3 million shares. With a per-share worth of $239.71, his stake was valued at roughly $1.8 billion. The inventory worth soared to $322.22 on the finish of 2025, pushing the inventory worth of his stake as much as about $2.4 billion, which meant Dimon noticed about $605.6 million in appreciation plus one other $40 million in dividends. This 12 months, he’ll see a 1.5 million inventory appreciation proper grant vest on account of a particular one-time award the board gave him in 2021. All informed, via inventory worth beneficial properties, dividends, and compensation, Dimon will see about $770 million for his work in 2025, in accordance with reporting by the New York Instances that was verified for Fortune by unbiased compensation agency Farient Advisors.
“Jamie Dimon has been rewarded for his loyalty, tenure, and efficiency over the course of those years,” stated Eric Hoffmann, vp and chief information officer at Farient. Hoffmann famous Dimon has accrued quite a lot of fairness via his compensation plan, private purchases, and by way of the 2021 particular award designed to retain him whereas the board labored via succession planning.
“The inventory’s appreciated by greater than a 3rd, and he’s a beneficiary of that like all of the shareholders of JPMorgan are,” stated Hoffmann.
Dimon’s “compensation really paid,” a regulator-required determine decided by a Securities and Change Fee rule, was calculated at roughly $227 million in 2024; $105 million in 2023; and $38 million in 2022, as compared.
And JPMorgan’s C-suite isn’t the one place seeing beneficial properties. Monetary companies compensation consultancy Johnson Associates known as 2025 a surprisingly optimistic 12 months for monetary corporations, regardless of early issues about tariffs and geopolitical instability that would have hit compensation. Johnson Assocites’ November 2025 report, “Sudden 2025 Rebound in a Altering Trade,” discovered that compensation throughout monetary sectors exceeded expectations, with will increase from 5% to 25%, relying on position and enterprise phase.
Founder Alan Johnson informed Fortune that 2025 was a 12 months when conventional banks got here “roaring again, completely” regardless of the early warning indicators and uncertainties. As Johnson tells it, 2024 didn’t fairly find yourself as sturdy because it may have been and folks had been hopeful about 2025. Lower to tariffs, which turned out not as unhealthy as predicted whereas many had been walked again, and the second half of the 12 months noticed extra M&A, buying and selling exercise, and new highs within the inventory market.
“The second half of the 12 months was a dash to the end line, and the primary few days of this 12 months proceed to look actually good,” stated Johnson.
Nonetheless, there are looming challenges forward, he warned. Headcount in monetary companies has elevated 77% for the reason that monetary disaster, and it may decline by 10% to twenty% through the subsequent three to 5 years as AI transforms enterprise operations. Johnson stated most CEOs don’t like to speak about it instantly, however there might be fewer jobs. His purchasers are already decreasing their recruitment efforts to carry on fewer entry-level hires. The way it will reshape conventional profession trajectories is but to be decided, he stated.
“These corporations have had a hierarchy that goes again a long time that’s fairly properly established and understood and this turns it on its head,” stated Johnson. “When you rent fewer folks on the backside, how do you then develop folks for the center or the highest? There gained’t be as many candidates and so they gained’t have had the identical profession expertise.”
“I don’t assume anybody has figured that out.”
