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Recent Press Releases (U.S. and international) for magazine issues and staff changes may be found below. Please note that for many issues there exists only a highlights sheet, while for others there may also be a full press release. The cover of FORTUNE's current issue is pictured at right. Please contact the appropriate communications staff member with any questions.
FORTUNE EXCLUSIVE: JAMIE DIMON TAKES A SHOT AT THE TITLE OF WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT BANKER New CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase is whipping a sprawling financial conglomerate into shape New York, March 22, 2006—In an exclusive cover story, FORTUNE looks behind the scenes at how Jamie Dimon, the brash, iconoclastic CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, has become “the most watched, most discussed, most loved, and most feared banker in the world today.” Dimon, reports senior writer Shawn Tully, is “much more than a cost cutter with a colorful personality and his compulsive candor is just one of his highly effective management tools.” After being unexpectedly shoved aside at Citigroup by Sandy Weill, with whom he helped create the world’s largest financial services company, he now wants to perfect the model he and Weill created there—and defeat the house he helped build. The story, “The Contender,” appears in the April 3 issue of FORTUNE and at www.fortune.com. In an exclusive in-depth series of interviews, Dimon—who took boxing lessons after being ousted at Citigroup—reveals how he plans to revamp J.P. Morgan Chase. His strategy, says Tully, is deceptively simple: boost revenues at a healthy pace while keeping a lid on costs. In pursuit of those goals, he doesn’t get bogged down in search for consensus or worry about hurt feelings. And cutting costs isn’t just about saving money; for Dimon, it means freeing up capital to seed new growth. Still, while Dimon would seem to be moving at lightening speed, things are actually going more slowly than he’d hoped. Getting J.P. Morgan’s house in order has “probably taken longer than I thought,” he says. “We had to increase spending in a lot of areas more than I initially said we would.” Ultimately, he expects that spending to lead to greater profits and to a higher stock price—and, perhaps, to surpassing his former employees across town at Citigroup. Investors, industry watchers, and fellow CEOs see Dimon as the one figure with the skills and the opportunity to prove once and for all that the model of a one-stop-shop financial firm can live up to its promise, reports Tully. And they know Dimon is itching to expand his empire with at least one breathtaking deal. “It would be hard to find a company more in need of the Dimon treatment than J.P. Morgan,” says Tully. “A hodgepodge of businesses from multiple mergers that were never fully integrated, the giant bank is burdened with a lazy culture and an underperforming stock ripe for reinvigoration.” And many are betting Dimon’s rare combination of an analytical, Cartesian mind with a passionate, damn-the-social-graces style will end up rewriting the rules of the game. “I don’t use superlative lightly, but he’s the best guy I’ve ever seen in financial services,” says Larry Bossidy, former Honeywell chairman and a J.P. Morgan director. ADDITIONAL QUOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS: For further information please contact: Phil DiIanni
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