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Dimon In The Rough
There are banks, and then there are really big banks, like Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Bank of America… and then there’s JPMorgan, which has ballooned into a financial behemoth unlike any other in history over the last 20 years, holding some $2.4 trillion in deposits.
At the head of JPM is Jamie Dimon, a 67 year-old New Yorker, who pocketed a cool $36m last year, according to a regulatory filing made yesterday, after steering the company to its best ever financial year, in which it booked almost $50 billion in profit. That was one of the strongest reports from America’s banks earnings season, which has generally seen a healthy set of results, as America’s economy continues to defy expectations of an impending economic slowdown.
Running up that hill
It’s been less than a year since Silicon Valley Bank imploded almost overnight, sending shockwaves through America’s banking system, and leading to JPMorgan rescuing First Republic from collapse in May, reminiscent of its actions during the 2008 financial crisis, when it acquired Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.
With every passing year, the sheer gravity of JPMorgan’s size makes it a compelling place for companies, individuals, and even governments, to store their cash. In fact, as of the latest data, roughly $1 in every $7 of deposits (~14%) is stored at the House of Dimon.
Where’s the rest?
If the end-of-year bonus you were banking on last month came in a little lighter than expected, you’re not alone: cash bonuses shrunk more than 20% in 2023 compared with the previous year, as small firm bosses in the US collectively tightened their purse strings while the job market normalized and inflation pinched.
According to new data from small business payroll platform Gusto, the average bonus slipped to $2,145 — a far cry from the $2,750 in Dec ‘22 and even further from the bumper $3,583 average recorded just before the pandemic. The share of workers who received a cash bonus at all was also down 2.7% from 2022.
Shrinking incentives
The cuts may not have come as a huge shock, with December polling from the WSJ suggesting that drop-offs were imminent. However, the scope of the pullbacks — with every industry tracked by Gusto reporting a decline in bonuses — was perhaps surprising.
End-of-year bonuses in both the tourism and transport industries shrunk 36% last year compared to 2022, a clear sign that the post-pandemic rush to lure workers back to those industries has weakened. At the other end of the spectrum, tech and finance workers found their payouts had held up better, with 2023 tech bonuses down just 4% to an average of $4,806 and finance workers still pocketing the most of any industry, despite a 12% decline: $13,255 on average.
IPO forum
Social media platform Reddit has confidentially filed paperwork for its long-awaited public listing, aiming for a potential debut in March, after a series of failed attempts at an IPO that date back to 2021.
Founded just a year after Facebook in 2005 (the same year as YouTube), Reddit is very much a part of that early social media vintage — but, unlike many of its peers, Reddit has maintained its early-internet feel. At the site’s core remains a series of forums, or “subreddits”, organized by users. There are places to discuss the latest on TV (r/television), places to hype you up (r/getmotivated), places to get advice (r/careerguidance), somewhere to chat about Canada, Mexico or China, places to learn how to code (r/learnprogramming), and about a thousand places for silly stuff (r/deepfriedmemes, r/contagiouslaughter, etc.). If you can think of it, odds are there’s a subreddit for it.
With an emphasis on anonymity — and little reward for building a “following” — Reddit is a far cry from the quick-hit vertical video format that has grown astronomically on TikTok and other platforms. Reddit’s largest groups, “r/funny” and “r/askreddit”, on the other hand, have seen more steady growth.
r/stockvaluation
The company is targeting a $10bn valuation, just ~1% of social giant Meta, but closer to that of smaller social peers like Snapchat ($26bn) and Pinterest ($25bn) — the last major social media platform to go public in 2019.
• Not seeing eye-to-eye… YouTube and Spotify are reportedly joining Netflix in not building native apps for Apple’s new $3,499 Vision Pro VR headset.
• Greenland’s ice caps are losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice every hour, according to a new study — 20% more than was previously thought.
• Tuned out: Pitchfork, the nearly 30-year-old music publication, is being folded into GQ.
• Boeing has secured an order for 150 of its aircraft from India’s Akasa Air, even after confidence in Boeing was dented by a flight scare earlier this month.
• Checking out which states have the most expensive groceries.
• Most Canadians live south of Seattle — and other map surprises.
• Mapping out America’s new business hotspots.
Off the charts: Which retail giant is adding to the already-bumper bout of layoffs hitting industries across the US in early 2024, yesterday announcing that it's cutting some 3.5% of its total workforce? [Answer below].
