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Jamie Dimon reaffirmed JPMorgan’s DEI commitments after pressure from an activist shareholder.
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One group wants JPMorgan to revisit how compensation is tied to the corporate’s racial-equity goal.
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Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending DEI programs within the federal government.
Jamie Dimon is doubling down on JPMorgan’s diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments amid pressure from an activist shareholder.
In an interview with CNBC on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan CEO said the bank was continuing to push ahead with its DEI work and environmental, social, and governance policies.
“Bring them on,” Dimon said about activist efforts. “We’re going to proceed to achieve out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community.”
Dimon is thought for working on each side of the political aisle. In 2020, JPMorgan announced a $30 billion program geared toward working on racial equity in personal finance, a move that got here as other financial institutions made significant commitments to similar causes. JPMorgan’s program included mortgage refinancing and dealing with historically Black colleges and universities.
Dimon’s comments at Davos got here after the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit, proposed this month that JPMorgan revisit how executive compensation is tied to the corporate’s racial-equity goal.
JPMorgan began an “accountability framework” in 2020 to evaluate executives’ progress toward DEI goals, which affects compensation. The firm doesn’t publicly break out what quantity of executive pay, including for Dimon, is tied to DEI work.
JPMorgan and NLPC didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
NLPC has sent shareholder proposals focused on climate, China, and other issues to major corporations lately.
In a distinct interview with CNBC on Wednesday, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, said that he’d seen news of shareholder proposals but that he hadn’t yet checked out any of them.
“We’re advising our clients to take into consideration this stuff,” Solomon said. “They give thought to decarbonization, they consider climate transition. They give thought to their businesses, how they find talent, the range of the talent they find all around the world.”
Goldman Sachs didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Shareholder proposals — about any subject — don’t all the time find yourself on corporations’ ballots. Proposals against ESG, including those against DEI, that got here to a vote have garnered little support previously 4 years, a review by the shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services found.