JPMorgan Chase investors disapprove of Jamie Dimon’s $52.6 million bonus

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss a majority of JPMorgan Chase shareholders voting against CEO Jamie Dimon’s $52.6 million bonus.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, shareholders at JPMorgan Chase are stamping their disapproval on CEO Jamie Dimon's $52.6 million retention bonus announced last year, with only 31% of investors participating, voicing their support.

Now, guys, you know me. I'm not a fan of these large compensation plans, but I'm going to take a different approach or a different viewpoint on this one. I say pay Jamie Dimon because you are looking at the modern day JP Morgan, in large part, because of his vision and his leadership since he took over, I believe, in 2006, the longest serving bank CEO. What do you want, a 15th tier Wells Fargo person running JPMorgan? He's done a good job. Pay him some money.

JULIE HYMAN: I mean, that's not really the point. First of all, it's a retention bonus. Jamie Dimon ain't going anywhere. If he does anything, he's going to retire. It's not like he's going to another company. And he said he's going to hang around for a while. The stock's down 27% over the past year, Sozz.

And, you know, it's not really about, to me, when you're looking at votes like this, because it is votes like this. It's not just this vote. It's a vote at Intel. We've seen votes like this at some other companies. It seems to me it's not really about Dimon individually as it is about a bigger movement and scrutiny of pay. And there's paying him and then there's paying him, right? Like, sure, give him a retention package, but $52.6 million, I mean, that's a lot of money.

BRAD SMITH: Right, and--

BRIAN SOZZI: And tax, Julie. You know, a lot of money comes out of the--

BRAD SMITH: Well, that happens in taxes, but I think for what we're seeing more broadly as well, there was actually some interesting data that had come out from the Conference Board that actually summarized exactly what you were mentioning, Julie. And that CEO confidence, it declined sharply in this most recent second quarter. And particularly, as part of this measure of CEO confidence, Conference Board survey, this essentially was the fourth consecutive quarter of declines. And with that in mind, that takes us back to some of the pandemic depths, if you will.

And so the measure stands at, in how they're kind of grading this, 42. That's down from 57 in that grading in Q1. And it's fallen into negative territory. They're also saying levels not seen since the onset of the pandemic. And I think that really spells out what investors themselves are also thinking through.

How well equipped are the CEOs of right now to navigate not just what the economic environment may be, not just what the retention of employees may be and continuing to move the stock price higher, but where are some of the CEOs also well positioned to move forward on initiatives that are ESG related? Where are they well positioned to essentially ensure that margins are remaining intact, even amid an economic environment that is all the uncertainty that it does right now?

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, and amidst all this backdrop here, keep in mind, in a couple of weeks, JP Morgan will have a closely watched investor day, and it could be spicy. It could be spicy here because JPMorgan, I would say, is really catching a lot of flack from investors.

Of course, one of them-- and analysts, too, I should mention-- Mike Mayo has been all over this one. Just how much JPMorgan is investing to lay the groundwork for the future of banking, notably in the digital space here. Dimon is going to have to come out here and justify why he continues to spend all this money ahead of what looks to be a sharp economic slowdown. So very spicy investor day coming up. I believe it's May 23, Julie.