With the departure of David Bolger from Bank One Corp. on Monday, Chief Executive Jamie Dimon will have lost all but one of the 11 most senior executives in the management team before he arrived in March 2000.
At this point, only head of investment management David Kundert remains among the original executives.
“A management team is always a dynamic group, especially at a company that is going through the changes and improvements that we are,” said spokesman Thomas Kelly.
The first departures came soon after Dimon took the helm: chief financial officer Robert Rosholt, corporate banking chief Jerry Jurgensen, and head of middle market banking Susan Moody.
Sherman Goldberg, the bank’s longtime general counsel, died the same month Dimon was hired. And William Boardman, who spearheaded the turnaround of Bank One’s beleaguered credit card unit, retired, as he had planned, in early 2001.
But five more planning group executives have left, seemingly of their own accord and sometimes without job prospects elsewhere.
Besides Bolger, who was head of merger integration before he replaced Jurgensen early in Dimon’s tenure, Bank One lost Marvin Adams, head of technology; Tim Moen, head of human resources; Bob O’Neill, chief auditor; and Ken Stevens, head of retail banking.
They have been replaced by people inside and outside the bank.
Despite a feeling among some employees that the place is run by a cadre of New Yorkers like Dimon, only three other officers in the planning group were hired out of New York. Two of them–CFO Charles Scharf and commercial banking chief Jim Boshart–came from Dimon’s previous employer, Citigroup.
Many Bank One veterans say that although Dimon is well-respected–and his turnaround plan for the bank is well-regarded–his management style is difficult to take for some traditional Midwestern bankers.
They and other managers who have left since Dimon arrived often say they became tired–not of working harder but of working differently. Dimon is known for driving people hard and being critical when he sees problems, which he clearly has since arriving at the troubled company.
“People are working to try to get the job done, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough for him,” said one source familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s sort of like management by chaos at times.”
For his part, Bolger, 44, said it was “time to step off the corporate ladder for a while, take time to relax a bit, then figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Dimon’s management style did not prompt him to leave, Bolger said.
“Nobody in the company works harder than Jamie,” Bolger said. “He’s brought an incredible sense of urgency to fixing the company and getting it back on track.”
Bank One officials said they are looking internally for someone to replace Bolger, and expect to name somebody soon.