Dimon asks bankers for M&A ideas

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon wants to remind the world that his bank is looking to make an acquisition.

“If you’ve got brilliant ideas, give me a call,” Dimon, the chief executive of the biggest U.S. bank, said at a conference Tuesday. “If you’re a competitor investment bank and you bring the idea, you get the fee.”

The longstanding CEO told investors in February that the bank was actively looking at acquisitions across its businesses and that it could buy anything except another U.S. bank. Since then, competitor Morgan Stanley has closed one mega-deal -- the takeover of ETrade Financial Corp. -- and announced another one, the $7 billion purchase of asset manager Eaton Vance Corp.

JPMorgan last week announced a small deal of its own: the purchase of fintech company 55ip, which positioned it to broaden offerings to financial advisers. Dimon signaled there could be more to come.

“Morgan Stanley’s done a good job with a couple of deals they’ve done,” he said. “So asset management, my line is open. It’s a scaled business. It’s a distribution business. It’s a brand business. It’s got to make sense.”

While the CEO expects regulators to toughen their grip on banks under a new presidential administration, he said he thinks they would be “very open” to JPMorgan doing a deal in a variety of industries or regions.

“It might be software. It might be fintech. It might be something overseas,” he said. “We’re open-minded.”

Separately, Dimon said the bank’s trading and investment-banking businesses are each on track to generate 20% more revenue in the fourth quarter than they did in the same period last year. That would put trading revenue at $5.9 billion, capping a record year for the group.