Morning Coffee: the JPMorgan banker who doesn’t want Jamie Dimon’s job. The AI robot that could save your career.

efinancialcareers.com:

Among the things that the New Year will bring are another couple of ticks on the clock for Jamie Dimon’s five year retention bonus, and consequently the opportunity for a few more rounds of speculation about succession. Surveying the top executives of JPM seems to suggest that nothing much has changed since the last round of speculation – Dan Pinto is the emergency candidate, Mariane Lake and Jennifer Piepszak are the top two most likely successors, but Jamie’s nowhere near the exit door yet and might not even leave at the end of the period. 

There are, however, a few more interesting details, particularly that Piepszak has apparently “privately told several people that she isn’t sure she wants the job” at various points in the past, although she’s apparently told them more recently that she does. Mariane Lake, for her part, has apparently taken calls from recruiters trying to fill other top jobs, and interviewed at both Wells Fargo and PayPal.

Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.

We probably shouldn’t read too much into this.  No matter how ambitious you are or how happy in your current job, it’s simple common sense to consider outside roles occasionally – if nothing else, you often get material insight into how the competition are thinking.  And similarly, there are plenty of contexts in which it might be considered polite or sensible to say that you’re not absolutely obsessed with getting the CEO’s job, particularly when he’s not actually announced a retirement date.

Of course, Piepszak and Lake are not really the first people to be in this position.  There’s quite a long and illustrious list of former front runners to succeed to this throne, who are now at hedge funds, private equity or other banks.