Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Chase could spend $20 billion on acquisition: ‘We are on the lookout’

“I do think there might be opportunities, and so we are on the lookout,” Dimon told analysts at a New York financial conference.

“There might be, in the next couple years, a chance to put $10 [billion] or $20 billion to work buying something,” Dimon said.

The comments came with caveats. Dimon framed acquisitions almost as a tool of last resort, not a growth strategy, and warned that bankers who lean too hard on dealmaking are often compensating for poor organic growth.

“You sit around a lot of management meetings, the first thing they do when they’re not doing well in organic growth is they start to bulls--t about [mergers and acquisitions],” Dimon said. “I don’t want to hear about M&A ... What are you doing to grow your business — sales, branches, tech, profits, products, services?”

Any takeover target, he said, would need to integrate cleanly into JPMorgan’s existing operations, fit the bank’s culture, and enhance core businesses rather than sit as a separate standalone unit.

“It can’t be just a pie-in-the-sky type of thing,” Dimon said.

JPMorgan has mostly grown organically in recent years, with the notable exception of its FDIC-assisted acquisition of First Republic Bank in 2023. It made a $10.6 billion payment to the regulator as part of that transaction.

Under Dimon, the bank’s largest and most consequential M&A deals were mostly crisis-era acquisitions of regulated banks, including First Republic, Bear Stearns and the retail operations of Washington Mutual.

The firm also acquired a string of smaller fintech firms but slowed down after spending $175 million to acquire Frank in 2021, a college aid startup that was later revealed to be a fraud.