Total Page : 352
Publisher : Simon Schuster
Publication Date : 2009 10 06
>> A good book displaying a vivid Jamie in front of us
Even though I haven t finished this book half of them I can t wait telling you that I indeed like this book
This book is very good in terms of displaying a vivid Jamie from a fresh graduates from HBS with lots of attractive offers to a CEO assistant of Sandy Weill to a two man company to the most visionary stronghead promising financial leaders
The most important thing I read from this book is that the author tells us a 360 degree Jamie where I can see the suffer and joyness all his road to the top
>> A Privilege A Pleasure An Honor Magnificent
I just finished Duff McDonald s Last Man Standing The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase This book should be required reading for every person in the financial services industry anyone studying business in college as well as entrepreneurs M A types accountants and investors It s just a fantastic incredible story woven together by a master literary artist
This is a tremendous biography Yet it s vastly more than that It is a crucial contribution to the the burgeoning insights into the development of the financial services industry in the U S Moreover it is a story about the development of character human character the character of a man Jamie Dimon whose life intelligence compassion and instincts continue to shape the landscape in America In many ways Dimon s life represents something that is lacking today in U S culture living role models for a younger generation to yearn to emulate
The writing by Duff McDonald is balanced provides the reader with a tremendous sense of Jamie Dimon as a human being as well as financier/CEO The writing has a pulse provides a perspective into both the personal and corporate world an existence that is often perplexing The dimensions of struggle insight learning and persistence all resonate throughout this non nonsense non fiction account of one of America s true leaders
The history of the development of the U S financial services industry is also quite detailed and anything but boring
After Alexander Hamilton founded the Bank of New York purportedly the first commercial bank in the U S in 1794 he had the industry to himself until 1799 About this time his political rival Aaron Burr started the Bank of Manhattan A banker named John Thompson started Chase National Bank in 1877 He named it after Salmon P Chase who d been President Lincoln s secretary of the treasury as well as Chief Justice of the U S Supreme Court
J P Morgan Company emerged in what has been referred to as the gilded age of American finance Founded in 1871 by J Pierpont Morgan and a Philadelphia banker by the name of Anthony Drexel P 203
The essence of the book is captured in the following paragraph from author Duff McDonald
After years of being considered a glorified number cruncher who only knew how to cut costs he was finally acknowledged as a leader who knew how to make a company grow What s more he was recognized s both a creative thinker and a man with the ability to shape the culture not just of his company but also of his industry and even the country itself It says something about Wall Street today that only a few people command both the respect of their peers and the genuine curiosity of the outside world P 322
Of course the years as Sandy Weill s protege are well documented and shared frankly yet with uncanny dignity However there are some lessons you can identify in the book that should serve readers requirement for a perspective on the real Sandy Weill as evidenced by the following
Weill had acquired the dreaded CEO disease which made him unable to hear anything but what he wanted to hear p 115
Sandy Weill on the other hand is proof that you should never underestimate the man who overestimates himself p 130
The Dimon family s dedication to giving back to community is well documented in the book
The Dimons give generously from their family foundation as well as from their personal accounts Jamie also gives gifts above and beyond annual bonuses to the people with whom he works closely including his driver And just like Sandy Weill he has tried to spread stock ownership through every company he s run from top to bottom driven by a desire to see his colleagues get rich along with him P 114
Dimon s insights into deal making and mergers and acquisitions activity are numerous useful and characterized in the following
On a call with analysts in May he tried once again to make explicit his view of acquisition opportunities There are three things that have to make sense he said And they are not in order of importance One is the business logic There should be clear business logic to it The second is the price Sometimes there is a price at which you cannot make it pay for shareholders And the third is the ability to execute You have to be able to see clearly getting done what you need to get done whether it is management or systems or marketing or culture or something like that If those things make sense you can then weigh and balance them Meaning if you have exceptional business logic and an easy ability to execute you could pay a higher price And conversely if those things are a little more complex you want a margin of error by getting a lower it price Pp 216 217
The tidbits that Warren Buffet shares about Dimon are priceless Here s a couple to chew on
Warren Buffett thinks Dimon separated himself from the pack by relying on his own judgment and not becoming slave to the software that tried to simplify all of banking into a mathematical equation Too many people overemphasize the power of these statistical models he says But not Jamie The CEO of any of these firms has to be the chief risk officer
You have to have somebody that s got a real fear in them of what can happen in the markets They have to know financial history You can t evaluate risk in sigmas quote from Warren Buffett p 232
Duff McDonald refers to sayings of Dimon as DIMONOLOGY These are precious sentences of wisdom uncommon sense and the voice of both character and experience Allow me to share a few here I particularly enjoyed to whet your whistle
a consistency to performance rather than someone chasing the flavor of the month p 206
One of the toughest jobs of the CEO is to look at all the stupid stuff other people are doing and to not do them p 214
Everyone was trying to grow in products we didn t want to grow in he later told a reporter So we let them have it P 214
There is one financial commandment that cannot be violated Do not borrow short to invest long particularly against illiquid long term assets You know what sinks companies he asked an audience in late 2008 Financing illiquid assets short P 230
Well sometimes you can t grow Sometimes you don t want to grow In certain businesses growth means you either take on bad clients excess risk or too much leverage P 231
I don t want to be big and stupid I want to be really good at what we do P 240
The issue is not just whether someone has the intellectual capacity to manage it Someone must also have the desire P 325
Individual units may have volatile results but the combination is more stable P 324
It is no surprise that a lack of corporate intrigue tends to go hand in hand with long term success P 303
He actually trusts the people working for him and trusts too that they can learn from their mistakes as he has learned from his own P 304
When talking of the most important things in his life he once said My family humanity my Country and the world And way down here is J P Morgan P 309
A lot of those mark to market losses will end up being real losses he said They are real losses that are simply being recognized in the market before they re being recognized in expected cash flows P 310
What we aim for is continuous improvement It s not like we think we get to a perfect place P 320
Problems don t age well denying or hiding them guarantees that they will get worse Bureaucracy silos and politics are the bane of large corporations they must be combated vigorously and continually P 160
No company has ever had much of a future by cutting costs Success is measured by top and bottom line growth P 169
Review our businesses and what we re doing well organically That kind of growth will get you a higher value for your shareholders By the way M A is risky and tough so the discipline is different You really need to think about the landscape to ask yourself what s changing Pp 173 174
I think it s important that you re open minded to other people s ideas P 176
Many of the previous decade s mergers had been nothing more than stacking doughnuts the holes in the business that had existed before were still there P 181
On large outsourcing contracts We want patriots not mercenaries p 93
open architecture in which the firm s brokers were allowed to offer any number of funds not just those from JPMorgan Chase P 194
If you admit your mistakes Dimon s theory went you save yourself the hassle of having your critics point them out to you P 196
Every single risk you re taking can be broken down to its smallest components and therefore be better understood All it takes is time and effort P 197
As Duff concludes this volume he shares the following
Jamie Dimon has emerged as a moral and managerial compass for both his industry and the country itself p 328
Frankly after 328 pages of absolutely wonderful investigative journalism the obvious discipline of a superb historical biographer and being immersed in the rare literary talents of a master story teller I am referring here to author Duff McDonald I unequivocally agree
To Jamie Judy family colleagues and to Duff McDonald It was a pleasure and a privilege to have the honor of reading about your lives My sincere thanks Your story shall endure with me
To the reader Buy This Book One of the Best I ve devoured in 2010 and likely to make my Top 10 for 2010 ENJOY
>> Good read with lots of practical applications
I really enjoyed this book It was both well written and full of personal applications Personally I was glad it didn t recite in gory detail all of the discussions surrounding the financial bloodbath in fall of 08 I think there are plenty of books out there right now for that
What I enjoyed was the up close description of 1 Dimon s leadership style and 2 how he thinks about businesses In those respects the gems in here were too many to count On the career/leadership side the take homes were plentiful For example Dimon s willingness to voice dissent his decision to eschew the typical investment banking path for a riskier position with better training potential and his ability to be a good father and husband during a demanding career here so many other business leaders fail spectacularly see The Snowball on Warren Buffet for an example
The insights about how to think about businesses were also abundant Dimon s concept of a fortress balance sheet is something that will stick with me for a long time I also admired his relentless attention to detail and his insistence that acquisitions and new product launches are meaningless without successful integration and implementation
This book set out to lionize Dimon and it did that A good friendly biography should challenge the reader to aim a little higher and work a little harder This book had that effect on me and for that reason I recommend it
