“You want honesty, decency, a work ethic, you want a compassion, you want a deep knowledge about the business. You want them to sweat, wear the company’s jersey every day. Very often I also run into corporate executives who talk about the company like it’s a third party. You want them to read customer complaints and say, ‘God, that’s embarrassing,’ and call the customer up and say ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
— JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on the Charlie Rose Show in July. Dimon is famous for digging deep into the business, a tendency that will serve him as JPMorgan absorbs its most recent acqusition. Last night, federal regulators seized the nation’s largest savings and loan, Washington Mutual, in the largest bank failure in history. Meanwhile, regulators brokered a deal to sell the bank to JPMorgan for $1.9 billion. In March, JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in a similar fire-sale scenario.