Jamie Dimon, chief executive and chairman of Wall Street investment giant J.P. Morgan Chase, reaped a 2009 bonus of about 16 million dollars in shares and options on shares, a bank spokesman said Friday. "All of his bonus is in deferred equity, there is no cash," said spokesman Joe Evangelisti.
News about Dimon's hefty bonus comes amid a public furor over big bonuses that some blame for the excessive risk taking that fuelled the global financial crisis. Last year, J.P. Morgan Chase repaid the US Treasury for an injection of 25 billion dollars in capital under the taxpayer-funded Troubled Asset Relief Program set up to prevent the collapse of the financial system.
The TARP repayment freed the bank from government-imposed compensation restrictions. Dimon led J.P. Morgan Chase, the second-largest US bank by assets, to huge profits in 2009 as the financial sector recovered, benefiting from a rebound in equities.
The New York-based financial giant last month said it had quadrupled its fourth-quarter net earnings to 3.27 billion dollars and doubled its profits for the full year to 11.7 billion dollars. In 2007 Dimon received 28 million dollars in bonuses; he declined to take any compensation other than his salary in 2008.