Dimon Bags Another

While Congress and the administration were trying to hammer out details of the largest bailout since the Great Depression, another bank bit the dust and was sold on the cheap to Jamie Dimon.

The deal, valued at $1.9B, was another bargain for Chase (consider that Bank One was only slightly larger than WaMu and in some trouble of its own when it was acquired by Chase for $58B in 2004) and all of a sudden, Chase is the 800lb gorilla in the room when the dust settles and we start to work our way out of this.

I was a Bank One employee with Dimon as its CEO when the Chase acquisition went down. His leadership skills were a huge part of the deal even happening in the first place as a provision of the purchase was for him to eventually move into the Harrison’s CEO spot.

He hit the ground running and the handover took place a half year early. But it wasn’t all roses. There was much gnashing of teeth over the cuts in perks such as car services, health club memberships and even extraneous newspaper subscriptions. He even had the audacity to move Chase’s IT HQ to Columbus, Ohio, where the same work could be done a lot cheaper. His constant focus on the bottom line and the fortress balance sheet is the reason Chase has been able to snatch these banks during a time when other banks are dropping like flies.

There’s obviously some risk in this deal — as there was with the Bear Stearns acquisition — but when the dust settles, Chase will emerge as the new king of domestic banks. And you have to wonder if despite the distortion field-weaving abilities of Steve Jobs, whether Dimon isn’t in fact, the best CEO in America.