The long partnership of Sandy Weill and Jamie Dimon was the stuff of legends. Starting when Dimon went to work for Weill straight out of business school in 1982, the two men built a financial empire included Smith Barney, Travelers and finally Citicorp. Then, suddenly, in 1998 it was over.

What happened?

It may have had something to do with a 1995 New York Times article titled “Becoming His Own Man.” In his new book, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase, Duff McDonald tells how that story caused a rift between the two men strong enough that Weill’s wife felt she needed to tell Dimon’s mother (the families had been friends since Dimon’s father Ted worked for Weill) that it was “not good for Jamie to be getting this kind of publicity.”

Weill, who had approved the idea of the article and whose PR team had overseen the process, felt slighted by two things about the article. The first was the accompanying picture, in which Dimon was in the foreground and Weill in the background. To some, it simply looked like Weill was a proud mentor looking over the shoulder of his accomplished protégé. But Weill interpreted it differently—as if it showed Dimon pushing Weill into the background. McDonald says the picture outraged Weill.

But even more than the picture was a quote from Joseph Califano, a Travellers director who had been the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter Administration. Califano had said that Dimon was actually running things. “He runs Smith Barney,” said Califano, adding that Dimon was more and more the driving force at Travelers as a whole.

Fortune has an excerpt from McDonald’s book that tells what happened next:

Several people told Dimon that the story was going to cause him problems. They were right. Weill barged into a meeting the next day. "Who the fuck told Joe Califano to say that? And who chose that photo?"

Still, Dimon failed to initially recognize the shift in his boss' perspective. "I was still a little bit of a kid," recalls Dimon. "Weill's PR people orchestrated it. He knew about it. He knew better, and I didn't. But I don't think it was really about the picture. He looked more like a proud father in it than anything else. It was about Califano's quote. All of a sudden there was the question: 'Is Jamie really running this place?' I think that was what got to him."

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Dick Bove may have proffered his love for Citi this morning (giving us a break from the BofA one), but he has his doubts as to the future of JP Morgan.

And people say we're contrarian!

Bove says that JP is one of the banks most at risk if the government’s financial regulatory overhaul plans go through.

While not being as bearish as he is regarding Wells Fargo, he says that it is not even out of the question that “portions of the firm would have to be sold or spun off."

Bove argues that since the government wants more say in how banks use capital and doesn’t want less of it locked up in “illiquid proprietary investing, trading, or other long dated assets or privately insured investments,” it might force JP Morgan to shrink its assets at risk to increase its liquidity.

"This means lower margins and quite probably lower growth in revenues," Bove says.

In addition, the bank has still has too much in assets at risk in businesses that are not traditional banking and since the government wants a separation of traditional banking and the use of bank capital in trading and proprietary, that will further hurt it.  

Finally, he says that as the bank ranks in the top three nationwide in every major consumer finance product credit cards, mortgages, and home equity loans, pricing parameters and higher regulatory costs will definitely harm these businesses. 

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The move to put Jes Staley in place as the clear successor to Jamie Dimon as the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase is another testament to Dimon’s abilities. And it’s a sign that he is no undoubtedly a better executive than his mentor Sandy Weill.

Weill allowed his leadership to become synonymous with Citigroup. He jealously fought off competitors for media and journalist contentions and punished likely successors. In Duff McDonald’s book on Dimon, Last Man Standing, we learn how a New York Times story about Dimon’s rise at the firm sent Weill into a rage.

This turned out to be bad for Citigroup and its shareholders. When Weill had to leave his post at the top of the bank because of the investigations of Eliot Spitzer, the only credible candidate was the bank’s lawyer who many suspected was rewarded for the post for keeping Weill from being indicted. The shares of Citi suffered for years under Charles Prince’s uninspired leadership. Weill’s ego hurt his shareholders.

Dimon isn’t making the same mistake.

“The shakeup shows he will take action to make the world aware that JPMorgan Chase is not Jamie Dimon alone,” McDonald writes at HarvardBusiness.org. “This is helpful for both employees and investors. Staley was recently the subject of a cover story in Institutional Investor, a move that wouldn't have happened without Dimon's blessing.”

McDonald also says that he doesn’t think the elevation of Staley signals that Dimon will resign in the near future.

“As he told me during the writing of my book, Last Man Standing, he doesn't have any intention of stepping down any time soon,” McDonald writes. “He wants to leave the bank in great shape, and he doesn't think it's there yet. My bet is that he'll stick around for at least another three years, if not more. But if you're betting on who's next in line, Staley's position is looking as good as it gets.”

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It's been a rough few years for Sandy Weill.

The Citi debacle has hurt his legacy -- despite hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy -- and now there's this: he's off the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. That means he's worth less than $950 million (#399); last year, he was worth a reported $1.3 billion.

Forbes (via The Deal): Sanford Weill, the architect and former chief of beleaguered Wall Street giant Citigroup tumbled off our list as Citi fought to stay alive. Shares of Citi have plunged 75% in the past 12 months, trading as low as $0.97 as sub prime exposure nearly destroyed the firm before the government came to its rescue. Shares have recovered 390% from their lows, but not enough to place Weill--worth $1.3 last August--back on the list.

If it makes Weill feel any better, he's one of 32 tycoons who were pushed off.

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Jamie Dimon looked confident and relaxed at a book party on the upper east side last night.

Just two days before J P. Morgan Chase announces its third-quarter earnings, the so-called "King of The Street" was breezily chatting with journalists and JP Morgan employees at a party on Park Avenue thrown by the Canadian consulate. The party was in honor of the publication of Last Man Standing, Duff McDonald's biography of Dimon. McDonald is Canadian.

We're told by one person familiar with the matter that on the trip up to the party, Dimon pointed out to a fellow JP Morgan employee the high school he attended nearby. 

Dimon's parents were also at the party. They looked like any proud parents of a man whose success was being celebrated, beaming brightly and talking with other party-goers.

McDonald told the story about how he got Dimon to agree to cooperate with the book. They were having dinner together and McDonald had come armed with a vast array of reasons Dimon should cooperate. But before he could begin his hard sell, Dimon cut in with a blunt question.

"Have you ever written a book before?" Dimon asked.

McDonald had not ever written a book. But Dimon agreed to play ball anyway. According to McDonald, the process of writing the book was far more trying than he expected. "I nearly lost my mind several times," he said.

We couldn't help but wonder if Dimon's appearance at the party just two days before JP Morgan announces earnings was an unintentional signal that the bank's five quarter winning streak is set to continue.  The current consensus estimate is that J.P. Morgan will report earnings of 49  cents per share, up from the 11 cents per share that it posted in the same period a year ago. If there was any danger that the bank was going to miss those numbers, we imagine Dimon would be huddled in the office instead of toasting a book about his financial prowess.

The guest list included New York Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, former Portfolio editor Joanne Lipmann, New York Observer theater critic Jesse Oxfeld, New York magazine editor Hugo Lindgren, Mediaite editor Rachel Sklar, Financial Times columnist John Gapper,
Billboard magazine's Rob Levine, ESPN's Peter Keating, Vanity Fair's Michael Hogan,GQ's Mark Healy, Fortune's John Brodie, Vanity Fair's Nina Munk, literary agent David Kuhn, and Sam Trammell, the guy who can turn into animals on True Blood.

As Dimon left the party, sometime around 8 pm, an attractive blond banker lady called out to him. "See you tomorrow boss," she said. Dimon smiled and walked to the elevator with his parents.

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John Reed, who originally helped merge Traveller's Group with Citibank with Sandy Weill, is performing a mea culpa for creating megazombie Citigroup (C):

Bloomberg: “I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened."

“I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” Reed said in the interview in his office on Park Avenue in New York. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity."

Reed also apologized for essentially helping repeal the Glass-Steagall Act:

“We learn from our mistakes,” said Reed, who wrote an Oct. 21 letter to the editor of the New York Times endorsing a division of banking activities. “When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I’m looking at this as a citizen.”

Read the whole thing >

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President Obama may be calling bankers "fat cats" recently, but there's at least one person on Wall Street who he has a big soft spot for.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's favored status in Washington is no secret. His name has been floated as the next Treasury Secretary; he argues against "too big to fail" financial institutions as part of financial reform; and JPMorgan repaid its bailout billions earlier than most. His bank even seems to have dodged the sub-prime bullet.

Heck, Dimon flew to the White House on a private jet this week and didn't catch any flack.

But how did a brash banker who made $8.5 million the same year his firm took $25 billion in bailouts gain national prominence and a sterling reputation? And during a crisis that claimed the careers or tarnished the reputations of most of his peers?

It's been quite journey. From being born into a family of bankers to excelling at Harvard Business School to a meteoric rise -- and ultimate split -- with mentor Sandy Weill at what would become Citigroup, Jamie Dimon has enjoyed stunning success in his career, if not using the most conventional Wall Street track.

See the life and rise of Jamie Dimon>>>

Image: Dimon's high school senior yearbook page, via Gawker

Childhood home

Dimon is born on March 13, 1956, with fraternal twin Ted Jr. The twins and their older brother Peter (b. 1954) spend their earliest days in this modest East Williston, Long Island home, according to Last Man Standing, a biography published this year by Duff McDonald.

Image: Last Man Standing

Banking in his blood

Jamie's parents Ted and Themis Dimon pictured here in 1962. Ted is a stockbroker at Shearson Hammill in New York City, the same firm as his father (Jamie's grandfather), Panos Papademetriou, a Greek immigrant, according to Last Man Standing

Themis is also the child of Greek immigrants.

Image: Last Man Standing

Grade school in Queens

Dimon goes to public school -- PS 69 -- in Jackson Heights, Queens from kindergarten to fifth grade after his family moves to the neighborhood, according to Last Man Standing.

The family later moves to Park Avenue on Manhattans' exclusive upper east side.

Image: Dimon with the family sheltie, Chippy, from Last Man Standing

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When Sandy Weill merged Citicorp and Traveler's Group in the late 1990s to create Citigroup, forever shattering Glass-Steagall, no one could ever predict the impact obanking's new monolith would have.

Now, in a New York Times profile, Weill discusses at length how it feels to watch the product of his creation he is best known for fall from grace.

Notably he defends the Citigroup (C) he left, arguing that the current mess is the result of subsequent management:

NYT: Mr. Weill vigorously defends his record, rebutting critics who say that Citi was an unstable creation. Judah Kraushaar, a hedge fund manager and former banking analyst who worked with Mr. Weill on his autobiography, said that Citi’s problem wasn’t that it was unmanageable, but that it lacked enough good managers — and that Mr. Weill was a good manager.

“When he left, the company had all the hallmarks of how Sandy ran a business: it was lean; it didn’t have a bloated balance sheet,” says Mr. Kraushaar. “Had he picked a different successor things could have turned out very differently.”

At one point, Mr. Weill had hoped to return and help the company recover and to defend his legacy himself. But the bank no longer has a place or a need for its old C.E.O. Now, Mr. Weill, 76, is trying to move on to a life without Citi.

“It’s never going to be the same company that it was,” he said one morning shortly before Christmas.

Continue reading ->

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Sandy Weill pushed Jamie Dimon out of Citigroup because he was too ambitious.

“The problem was in 1999 he wanted to be C.E.O. and I didn’t want to retire,” Weill told the New York Times. “I regret that it came to that. I don’t know what else could have been done except for him to be more patient.”

It is an extraordinary admission from a man who built one of the largest banks in the world. Weill and Dimon were close business associates and friend for decades, with while in the mentor role to the much younger Dimon. Until Dimon was forced out, many assumed he would be Weil’s successor as head of Citi.

Over the years we’ve heard various explanations for the split. Some said it was Dimon’s reluctance to promote Weil’s daughter. Others have attributed the split to Weill’s jealousy over the media attention Dimon had begun to receive. Still others have said, in whispered voices, that Weil worried Dimon was plotting some kind of coup.

Now we learn from Weill’s own admission that it was his own reluctance to step aside that forced Dimon out. And he blames Dimon for his impatience. Keep in mind that Weill was 66 when Dimon was forced out and he retired just four years later. For the sake of those four years, apparently, the ship of Citi was wrecked.

Fascinatingly, Dimon seems to already be preparing to avoid this mistake. At just 53 years old, he has already promoted a likely successor.

Photo: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis via New York Magazine

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Sandy Weill pushed Jamie Dimon out of Citigroup because he was too ambitious.

“The problem was in 1999 he wanted to be C.E.O. and I didn’t want to retire,” Weill told the New York Times. “I regret that it came to that. I don’t know what else could have been done except for him to be more patient.”

It is an extraordinary admission from a man who built one of the largest banks in the world. Weill and Dimon were close business associates and friend for decades, with while in the mentor role to the much younger Dimon. Until Dimon was forced out, many assumed he would be Weil’s successor as head of Citi.

Over the years we’ve heard various explanations for the split. Some said it was Dimon’s reluctance to promote Weil’s daughter. Others have attributed the split to Weill’s jealousy over the media attention Dimon had begun to receive. Still others have said, in whispered voices, that Weil worried Dimon was plotting some kind of coup.

Now we learn from Weill’s own admission that it was his own reluctance to step aside that forced Dimon out. And he blames Dimon for his impatience. Keep in mind that Weill was 66 when Dimon was forced out and he retired just four years later. For the sake of those four years, apparently, the ship of Citi was wrecked.

Fascinatingly, Dimon seems to already be preparing to avoid this mistake. At just 53 years old, he has already promoted a likely successor.

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Simon Johnson, the former IMF chief economist who is now a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management recently spoke at INET's conference in Bretton Woods on a panel on "Too Big to Fail."

He told the room that Goldman is still too big too fail; it simply has to be bailed out if it fails at this point.

We've transcribed part of his speech:

"Who in the room thinks that if Goldman Sachs hit a rock, a hypothetical rock -- I'm not saying they have, I'm not saying they will -- today, who here thinks they would be allowed to fail, like Lehman Brothers did, unimpeded by any government bailout, starting Monday morning? Can Goldman Sachs fail?"

[Laughter]

"I've asked this question around the country and only one person has ever raised his hand. It was in New York. He had a big short position in Goldman stock. That's New York.

"Seriously, it can't happen. Goldman is a $900 billion bank, total balance sheet. You might want to say its too big to fail, or you might want to use the language of Mervyn King, 'too important to fail.

"You wouldn't allow it to fail. I wouldn't allow it to fail if it was my decision, you wouldn't either. It's too scary today, given the nature of the global economy. And from that scariness comes power."

Later, he discusses why reform hasn't happened.

"Let me tell you why this isn't happening.

"The bankers want to continue to be paid on a unadjusted for risk, return on equity basis. Of course they do. And the way they get nice compensation packages is by taking a great deal of leverage...

"The executives of the top 14 financial institutions took out in cash $2.6 billion between 2000 and 2008. They top 5 took out $2 billion.

"They are, in order: Sandy Weill, who built Citigroup, which then blew up, after his watch. Henry Paulson, who built Goldman Sachs, and was the point-man lobbying the government to lower leverage caps, for investment banks, which even now Larry Summers says was a great mistake. Goldman Sachs blew up. Angelo Mozilo, number 3, built Countrywide and that actually built up on his watch. Dick Fuld, number four, Lehman Brothers, and Jimmy Cayne, Bear Stearns.

"Those 5 people took out $2 billion. So that's the private gain, one measure of it.

Then he explains what the banks did to us.

"What's the public loss? Larry Summers said from this podium yesterday that the TARP money would be repaid from banks and that's probably true, but that's not the cost. Is it 8 million jobs lost? Is it a 6% fall in unemployment and we're still 5% down below the peak? Is it the increase in net federal government debt held by the private sector in the United States?

"Compare the congressional government office medium term forecast for debt to GDP on that measure before the crisis and after the crisis. It's a 40% increase. That is a serious banking crisis.

"THAT's the cost we're looking at. That's what the banks did to us. They got bailed out. And we have done nothing significant that will prevent this from happening again."

Via the Economist

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JP Morgan smashed earnings estimates last week, as other banks have seriously struggled in the first half of 2011.

That makes Jamie Dimon, the bank's CEO, man of the moment.

The thing is... Dimon is often man of the moment.

When you look back at his life, there's a trend, and it's not hard to see: Jamie Dimon comes out on top, every time.

Even when he gets fired...

Dimon, a twin, was born with finance in his blood and grew up on Long Island in a modest family home

In 1956, Mrs. Themis Dimon gave birth to twin boys Jamie and Ted Jr. They already had an older brother.

Dimon's dad was a stockbroker. And his grandfather, a Greek immigrant, also worked in finance.

Source: Last Man Standing

The modest life didn't last long: the family moved from Queens to the Upper East Side on Park Avenue

Dimon went to public school in Queens until he was in the fifth grade, then his family decamped to Manhattan.

Source: Last Man Standing

Once he arrives on the Upper East Side, the athlete and ladies' man attended Browning: a private, all boys high school

At Browning Dimon played varsity soccer, basketball and baseball. Apparently his nickname was "Mad Dog." Amazing.

Dimon was also a bit of a ladies' man. "In senior year, he majored in his girlfriend," a pal said.

Souce: Last Man Standing

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Just three weeks after putting his Central Park West penthouse on the market for a record $88 million, ex-Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill has found a buyer, the New York Post reports.

While an agreement has been reached with the buyer, no contract has been signed and the buyer, so far, has chosen to remain anonymous. The buyer appears to be foreign, sources told the Post.

If the apartment at storied 15 Central Park West sold for its asking price, it would set a record for price paid per square foot of a Manhattan apartment, according to the Real Deal.

Weill said at the time the apartment was listed that proceeds from the sale would go to charity. He and his wife purchased the 6,744-square-foot penthouse for $43.7 million.

Where will the Weills go? They're downsizing--to an apartment on the sixth floor of the same building.

Click here for a tour of 15 Central Park West >

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Ever since it was reported that former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill's $88 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West had been snatched off the market within three weeks, everyone had been scrambling to unveil the mystery buyer.

Yesterday, the mystery was solved. The buyer of Manhattan's most expensive apartment is Russian business magnate and billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, reported the New York Observer yesterday, citing unnamed sources. (See a floor plan and pictures of the penthouse here.)

He's currently living in the tax haven of Cyprus, but if he moves into his posh new penthouse, he'll become the fifth richest person in New York City.

According to Forbes, Rybolovlev is 45 and worth about $9.5 billion, making him the 93rd richest man in the world. Although he received his training in medicine, Rybolovlev made his riches by buying up shares in industrial companies, eventually rising to the top of fertilizer company Uralkali. He sold his stake in the company for $6 billion last year after it was acquired by another company.

Based on Rybolovlev's past history and purchases, we're pretty surprised this man hasn't made more headlines. 

For one, he was once accused of murderer and spent a year in jail in Russia before being acquitted for lack of evidence, according to the New York Observer. And he's made headlines most recently for buying the French football team AS Monaco.

He's also in the process of what may become the world's most expensive divorce—which could cost him up to $5.8 billion. The ownership of a $111 million yacht and properties stretching from London to Singapore are also being decided as part of those proceedings. One of those estates is Donald Trump's former Florida mansion, which Rybolovlev bought in 2008 for $95 million.

By the way, when the sale is completed, it's likely to set a record—our calculations put Rybolovlev at paying $13,048 per square foot.

Now that the buyer has been revealed, we're waiting to hear which organization will get the $88 million—Weill has promised he will pledge all proceeds from the sale to charity.

SEE ALSO: Take a tour of 15 Central Park West.

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Sandy Weill just sold his fabulous penthouse to a Russian billionaire for $88 million and gave the proceeds to charity.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, he's selling his yacht, "April Fool" for $69.5 million.

We're really not sure why he's doing all this. Yes, he did say that wealthy Americans need "to be quiet" during this economic downturn, but selling his 200 foot twin diesel yacht seems more like going totally silent.

The vessel (listed here) boasts 1 master bedroom and 4 guestrooms, a gorgeous dining room, and a jacuzzi.

Meet the April Fool

You could take a dip in the jacuzzi

Or have breakfast on this sunny deck

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Move over, Ekaterina Ryoblovlev—there's a new contender on the market for the most expensive apartment in New York City.

At developer Extell's under-construction behemoth One57, the price tag on the most expensive unit has just increased, from $98.5 million to $110 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The building, which will overlook Central Park, has not been completed and it's already making headlines. What else would you expect from a property where the storage bins are selling for $200,000—more than the cost of a Mercedes?

So why the price hike for the building's top unit?

It's likely a result of the recent sale of Sandy Weill's penthouse at 15 Central Park West to the daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitry Ryoblovlev for $88 million, the full asking price, the WSJ's Josh Barbanel writes, noting that the sale gave the high-end market a "jolt."

If you're curious what $110 gets you at One57, the apartment will sit on the top two floors of the 90-story building and have a double-height living room facing the park, according to the WSJ.

The price on the second-priciest unit in the building has also increased, to $105 million. That unit, also a duplex, will have an indoor "winter garden" and optional pool.

Now meet the guy who bought Sandy Weill's apartment for his daughter >

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At Bill Ackman's Harbor Investment Conference last week, the hedge funder posed a question to one of his guest speakers, Steven Roth of Vornado Realty, on "What makes a great negotiator?"

The famed real estate mogul Roth gave a very simple answer of 3 steps—establish the price of the product carefully, move in very small increments and understand the counterparty from A to Z.

To accompany his answer, Roth used an anecdote from the recent, heavily publicized sale of former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill's $88 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West.

"The brilliance in that deal was Sandy setting the price, because he could've set it at $50 million or $40 million or $60 million," Roth said. "He didn't have any idea whether that was the right price or not."

Weill sold his penthouse for the asking price of $88 million just three weeks after it went on the market. The sell price set a price-per-square-foot record for New York City. Weill had told Roth about the experience of selling his penthouse at a recent lunch, and admitted that he was unsure how to price the penthouse.

Roth continued by explaining that after setting the right price, one should use the next two steps—moving down in very small increments and use understanding of the counterparty to one's advantage—to be a successful negotiator.

"The first thing is that if you're on the sell side of something, and you say 'I want $22 million worth,' nobody is going to give you $22 million worth. So the pricing of the product is extremely important," he said. "I don't do deals now anymore day-to-day but the one thing I do is I price the product.  I price every single space we have in our business."

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This year, Citi marks its 200th anniversary on planet Earth.

And as with the other banking and wealth creation histories we've recently told, the tale of Citi is a heady mix of patriotism and gore.

The bank was instrumental in supporting the country's rise to world power at the turn of the last century.

Yet it played a role in nearly every financial crisis the country's experienced.

For the full story of this American institution, read on.

Citibank was born from anger.

The charter of the First Bank of the United States was allowed to lapse in 1811 thanks to opposition from Jefferson about centralization.

In its stead, northern merchants, led by Alexander Hamilton, applied to charter their own banks, which they hoped would be large enough to replicate the FBUS' economy of scale. The City Bank of New York was created in June 1812. 

Samuel Osgood, a Revolutionary War hero who'd served alongside Hamilton in Washington's cabinet, was its first president.

Source: New York Times

The bank's first big splash came from financing armaments during the War of 1812.

It was one of the first to participate in lending efforts, a crucial decision at a time when Treasury had been caught flat-footed by the termination of the FBUS.

Source: Citi

Moses Taylor was the bank's most important president of the 19th century.

He first became involved with the bank after the Panic of 1837, and slowly acquired a controlling interest. In 1856, he was named president, and served until 1882.

Source: Encyclopedia of American business history, Vol. 1

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Amanda Gordon's "Scene Last Night" column for Bloomberg has a funny story about the first time famed New York Times' photographer Bill Cunningham met Citigroup's former CEO Sandy Weill.

Cunningham, who is known for going around with his camera snapping pictures, was being honored with the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence at the Waldorf-Astoria last night with a bunch of Wall Streeters, including Weill in attendance.

Here's how he recalled meeting the CEO, who was at the helm of Citi when it was still merged with Travelers. 

From Bloomberg:

Cunningham first spotted Weill without his jacket, at a gala in a very hot tent.

“I couldn’t believe it, so I asked who he was. The press agent said he ran a company, couldn’t remember the name but the logo was an umbrella. So I thought, ‘He’s an umbrella maker?’”

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Yesterday, Wall Street was rocked by the news that industry powerhouse JP Morgan faces a $2 billion loss in its Chief Investment Office.

Perhaps you think that after the financial crisis of 2008 we should be used to seeing massive bank losses, but with JP Morgan that's not so. The bank was known for being the most responsible institution on the Street, and the man at its helm, CEO Jamie Dimon, was recognized as a man who simply didn't lose.

Now all of that has been thrown into question. Regulators will pounce on this loss to argue for more regulation, and Dimon's vocal opposition to more rules will be fodder for critics from New York to Washington.

That said, we recognize that this is a dark spot in Dimon's otherwise illustrious career and life, so we've put it together for you. It's quite impressive.

Once you see where he's been, perhaps you'll have no doubt that Dimon will be back on top soon enough — it just may take some time.

*Some text and photos by Katya Wachtel

Dimon, a twin, was born with finance in his blood and grew up on Long Island in a modest family home

In 1956, Mrs. Themis Dimon gave birth to twin boys Jamie and Ted Jr. They already had an older brother.

Dimon's dad was a stockbroker. And his grandfather, a Greek immigrant, also worked in finance.

Source: Last Man Standing

The modest life didn't last long: the family moved from Queens to the Upper East Side on Park Avenue

Dimon went to public school in Queens until he was in the fifth grade, then his family decamped to Manhattan.

Source: Last Man Standing

Once he arrived on the Upper East Side, the athlete and ladies' man attended Browning: a private, all boys high school

At Browning Dimon played varsity soccer, basketball and baseball. Apparently his nickname was "Mad Dog." Amazing.

Dimon was also a bit of a ladies' man. "In senior year, he majored in his girlfriend," a pal said.

Souce: Last Man Standing

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