Jamie Dimon Totally Downplayed JP Morgan's 17,000 Upcoming Job Cuts
Four-thousand of those cuts are expected to go down this year and the other 13,000 are expected to come from the bank's mortgage unit.
CEO Jamie Dimon totally downplayed the forthcoming layoffs in his remarks yesterday.
Here's what we've transcribed from the audio (emphasis ours):
"Headcount, there was a little bit of a misunderstanding that came out. That number's down 4,000 in 2013 another 13 in 2014. Obviously, that's a rough estimate in 2014. The world changes. Those are just are just net negatives, remember the pluses and minuses. I'm just going to focus on two negatives. OK.
"Ryan McInerney talked about retail branches being down 6,000. That's over two years, I think over two years, Ryan, is that accurate? Over two years. Hundred percent by attrition. That, just think of that as one person per branch as the new technology goes in. It's not very complicated and obviously he's adding people in other areas — liquid, cards, products, services, etc. There are other pluses and minuses...
"The other one Kevin Ward has mentioned is mortgage down 15. We're going to do as much as we can — redeployment, attrition as possible. That is basically as defaulted loans come down, the people who handle defaulted loans come down. You could make the chart yourself. And then we're putting in some new technologies. So, there we do this thing called redeployment where we actually try, and have been unbelievably successful, take plants, factories, etc, etc. and try to get them employed in other functions inside the company and a couple cases other companies. We took the whole thing and moved on to some other service company. So hopefully we'll get that done...
"The last thing I'll mention is really about people because Mike Mayo you mentioned a very important thing. OK. No one at JPMorgan ever, ever worries about losing their job because they made a mistake. I think if you run a business and the first time you make a mistake you lose your job, why would you want to work there? I've been on Wall Street my whole life I've seen the hang 'em high shoot 'em you lose money. It also leaves a bad attitude make as much as you can while you can before you get shot in the back of the head."
He makes it so it doesn't sound all that bad.
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