JPMorgan chief says firm wants more brokers

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JPMorgan chief says firm wants more brokers

Dimon would triple his force of retail reps if they're "top' people

By Jed Horowitz

November 1, 2009 6:01 am ET

Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said he is interested in hiring more retail brokers for the small brokerage business that the bank inherited last year when it absorbed The Bear Stearns Cos. Inc.

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“I love the retail business,” he told an audience last week at the annual meeting of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. “So if you're really good, call JPMorgan, and we'll hire you.”

In the context of the larger economic, political and regulatory issues that Mr. Dimon addressed in a question-and-answer session with public television star Charlie Rose, it was a lighthearted moment.

But the banking executive, once brokerage legend Sanford I. Weill's top lieutenant, said that the retail- securities business hits close to home because his father and grandfather were both brokers, and he remembers the days of orders delivered to stock exchange floors via pneumatic tubes.

JPMorgan has about 350 retail brokers, down from a peak of about 450 under Bear Stearns, but Mr. Dimon said that he would be happy to expand the force to as many as 1,000 “top, top, top” brokers.

E-mail Jed Horowitz at jhorowitz@investmentnews.com.