This year, Jamie Dimon celebrates 20 years at the helm of JPMorgan Chase. The 69-year-old CEO is set to hand over the reins to a successor “in a few years,” he said during an investor event this week. “I was told to say this directly,” Dimon said, drawing laughter from the audience. “I’m here for a few years as CEO, and maybe a few after that as executive chairman.”
For most of the past decade, Dimon’s usual answer to succession questions was that retirement was always five years away. That script changed in 2024, when he rocked the banking world by admitting that his timetable was “not five years old.”
Since then, JPMorgan’s board has made succession planning a priority, describing the transition as a “medium-term” focus. In interviews, Dimon has made it clear that his replacement will likely come from within—a sign that has caught the attention of several top executives at the bank.
The race has already seen some unexpected turns. Daniel Pinto, the bank’s former CEO and president—who once said Dimon would be CEO if he was “hit by a bus”—removed himself from the race last year when he announced his retirement. Jennifer Piepszak, another lieutenant who has long been considered a prominent figure, also withdrew from consideration after assuming the role of senior officer.
One thing’s for sure: whoever replaces Dimon, who turns 70 in March, will have big shoes to fill. Since becoming CEO in 2006, Dimon has guided JPMorgan to the Financial Center of 2008, emerged as one of the most powerful economic voices on Wall Street, and built the company into the largest US bank by assets and market capitalization, dwarfing even its closest competitors.
Here’s a look at some of the top candidates for the job:
Marianne Lake
Marianne Lake, the CEO of consumer bank JPMorgan, has long been considered a front-runner to succeed Dimon. Originally from the UK, he started his career in JPMorgan’s London office in 1999 before moving to New York five years later.
Lake previously served as CFO from 2014 to 2019 and led JPMorgan’s consumer lending business from 2019 to 2021. “If investors were to do a straw poll today, they would probably pick Marianne,” Brian Foran, an analyst at Truist, told CNBC last month.
Lake, 57, also founded JPMorgan’s Women on the Move Initiative, which supports women-owned businesses, career development and financial health. She has spoken publicly about her unconventional approach to parenting using surrogacy to show other career-driven women that it is possible to pursue professional and personal ambitions.
Troy Rohrbaugh
The dark horse contender is Troy Rohrbaugh, a long-time JPMorgan executive who in 2024 became CEO of the commercial and investment bank (CIB). Rohrbaugh, 55, joined the bank in 2005 and has since overseen a range of market-focused businesses.
And he maintains a significant presence throughout the financial industry. Bohrbaugh served as chairman of both the New York Federal Reserve’s Foreign Exchange Committee and the Global Financial Market Association’s Foreign Exchange Group. He is also a member of the Joint Standing Committee of the Bank of England.
Beyond Wall Street, he supports several of his alma maters, serving on the boards of Johns Hopkins and as a trustee of The Gilman School, an all-boys prep school in Baltimore. Rohrbaugh is also a founding member of the Frannie Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports diabetes and heart disease research.
Doug Petno
Doug Petno was also nominated by JPMorgan’s board as CEO. He shot onto Wall Street’s conservative radar last year when he joined Rohrbaugh as co-head of CIB following a long stint as CEO of commercial banking, where he led domestic expansion and expanded into international markets.
Petno, 60, has spent more than three decades with the company, starting his career in its oil and gas group. “He’s a good client and he’s very cultural,” Dimon told Bloomberg in an interview last January, adding that Petno also “has a sense of humor.”
Outside of banking, Petno’s interests include climate and conservation; serves on the Nature Conservancy’s board of directors. He is reportedly a fitness enthusiast and attends Barry’s Bootcamp.
Mary Erdoes
Mary Erdoes, 58, heads JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division and has spent more than three decades rising through the company’s ranks. He has been in charge of the business since 2009, and his leadership of the emerging division has always put him in the spotlight.
In 1989, Erdoes was the only woman in her graduating class at Georgetown to earn a degree in mathematics. He later received an MBA from Harvard and now serves on the school’s Senior Advisory Council, in addition to holding board roles at the Harvard Management Company and the US-China Business Council.
An unwavering advocate of AI adoption, Erdoes has in recent years aimed to simplify the productivity of his division with new technologies. “Mary’s strategic vision, execution and ability to quickly adapt to fast-moving technology have made her extremely successful,” Ebrahim Poonawala, a research analyst at Bank of America, told American Banker last year.
Jeremy Barnum
Jeremy Barnum, 53, is another potential successor and is one of the bank’s most public-spirited executives. He has served as chief financial officer at JPMorgan since 2021 and regularly represents the company at investor conferences and earnings calls.
His path to the C-suite was not straightforward. After first joining JPMorgan in 1994, Barnum was let go a decade later following a trading blunder. He returned in 2007 to help rebuild the credit trading operations and later rose within CIB, serving as head of global research and CFO of the division from 2012 to 2021.
Like many of his financial peers, Barnum attended boarding school and an Ivy League university. But colleagues say his interests go beyond financial theory: he spent much of his youth in Barcelona, studied chemistry, and is known among his peers as an intellectual.
