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Jamie Dimon’s Fortress: How One Banker Rebuilt Wall Street and Outlasted Them All
From Citigroup exile to America’s financial stabilizer — inside Jamie Dimon’s improbable 25-year run
When Jamie Dimon walked about of Citigroup’s office in 1998, fired by his mentor Sandy Weill — the story could have ended there. The heir-apparent to Wall Street’s throne had been dethroned. Instead, what followed is one of the most remarkable second acts in corporate history.
On stage of Radio City Music Hall, Dimon sat down with the Acquired podcast to reflect on that journal: the exile years, the audacious $60 million bet on Bank One, the crucible of the 2008 financial crisis and ultimately, building J.P. Morgan Chase into an $800 billion fortress.
This is not jus the story of a man. It’s the playbook of how to survive when everyone else blows up.
From Heir to Exile
In the 1990s, Dimon and Sandy Weill had built Citigroup into the blueprint for the modern financial conglomerate. Everyone assumed Dimon would soon be CEO. Instead, he was abruptly fired.
“I went home told my kids. One asked if we’d have to sleep on the streets,” Dimon recalled. His response: “My net worth, not my self-worth was involved.”
