JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is not the only Wall Street chief to be selling big blocks of shares, the Financial Times reports.
Five of the top 10 sellers at Wall Street’s big six banks are at JPMorgan. This includes head of asset and wealth management Mary Erdoes, who has sold $63 million; investment banking chief Daniel Pinto, who has unloaded $53 million since Dimon became CEO in 2006; commercial banking boss Douglas Petno, who has cashed in $34 million worth of stock; and co-head of consumer banking Marianne Lake, who has sold stock worth $29 million.
A JPMorgan spokesperson said each of these executives still own “at least 50% of the shares they’ve been granted.”
When Dimon begins selling 1 million shares worth $140 million early next year, as filings have revealed, he will top the heap of bankers unloading their stock. It will be the first time that Dimon has sold any JPMorgan stock since he joined the bank 18 years ago.
This flies directly in the face of the advice of Dimon’s mentor, Sandy Weill, former Citigroup CEO and chairman, who insisted that Wall Street’s leaders agree to a “blood oath” not to sell their shares until they left their positions.
Dimon’s filing says he is reducing his stakes for “financial diversification and tax-planning purposes.” Even after he completes the sale, he will still own more stock of the company he oversees, 0.3% of JPMorgan’s outstanding shares, than any other executive on Wall Street. These shares pay Dimon tens of millions of dollars in dividends each year.
One of the reasons why Dimon, other bank CEOs and top executives may be selling tens of millions of dollars of their shares is because their compensation is increasingly being loaded up in stock.
As one longtime Wall Street executive explains, “If you get paid $25 million, 50% of that goes to taxes, and 80% is paid in stock. Everyone can live on that, but you’re still not accumulating liquid net worth.”
Other notable Wall Street bigs unloading their equity include current No. 1 seller, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, who has realized $78 million in profits from his holdings, $48 million just this year.
Ted Pick, who will succeed Gorman as Morgan CEO in January, has sold $30 million of stock, while colleagues Dan Simkowitz and Andy Saperstein have cashed in $25 million and $19 million, respectively.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has sold nearly $22 million of his stock since 2006. Also from Goldman Sachs: John Waldron, who has sold $20 million in that timeframe; and John Rogers, Goldman’s chief of staff up until August, who has taken $34 million worth of stock off of the table.
Before becoming Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan sold $1.9 million of the stock he owned in BofA.
None of this data includes ownership or sales of restricted stock or stock options. ISS data shows that the CEOs of the nation’s six biggest banks have been paid more than $400 million in restricted stock in the past three years.
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