JPMorgan Chase plans to add to its headcount this year as the firm sees opportunities in everything from dealmaking to U.S. wealth management to international retail banking, bucking a trend by Wall Street rivals who have shed thousands of jobs in recent months.
After a subdued couple of years, the biggest U.S. bank is seeing "plenty of growth" and "all the components are for a strong year," President Daniel Pinto said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Francine Lacqua on Wednesday from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The lender is also seeing growth opportunities for its payments division.
JPMorgan "has the returns and the firepower to continue investing through the cycles and that is really what allows us to continue, regardless of the economic environment, to continue growing," he said. "When I look at our plans, we will increase our staff this year for sure."
The bank currently employs more than 300,000 people and "the number of people that we employ has been growing and not shrinking," Pinto said.
Pinto's comments come after JPMorgan closed out the most profitable year in U.S. banking history and forecast that the windfall may continue this year. During recent earnings calls, many Wall Street executives said they expect a dealmaking pickup following a prolonged drought that brought investment banking revenue last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.
Still, JPMorgan's hiring plans stand in contrast to many of its largest competitors. Citigroup said last week it will eliminate 20,000 roles to save as much as $2.5 billion as part of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser's quest to boost its lagging returns.
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Morgan Stanley had to set aside $353 million in severance cost last year, whereas Goldman Sachs Group said its staff heacount decreased 7% during 2023, which reflected a "headcount reduction initiative" across the firm.
Over-optimistic
Separately, Pinto joined other Wall Street executives in predicting that investor expectations for a series of interest rates cuts this year might prove over-optimistic.
"The market was pricing until yesterday six cuts which is a very unlikely scenario," he said. "If you put yourself in the shoes of the Fed, if that is the scenario and the unemployment rate is so tight and the economy is doing fine, why are you going to rush it?"
Pinto said he expects the Fed to cut rates if "everything continues to go this way" but said any change would probably come later in the year.
Pinto also cautioned that many investors may not have priced in the geopolitical risk which he called "substantial."
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"The geopolitical situation is stable to deteriorating: terrible things happening in Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, the tension between China and the U.S., electoral cycles," he said. "There are issues that for sure have not been priced in the market and that's a time to be be careful on this sort of optimism."
Pinto has been sole president of JPMorgan for two years, and business-line heads report jointly to him and his boss, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon. He rose through the firm's massive trading business to oversee the corporate and investment bank, which he still does today in addition to holding the president role.
-- With assistance from Francine Lacqua.
