JPMorgan Chase has hired a record number of senior commercial and investment bankers over the past year, in a sweeping recruitment campaign aimed at boosting its market share across key sectors and geographies.
The Wall Street giant has lured about 100 managing directors from rivals including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup since early 2024, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times. The hiring spree marks the largest influx of senior bankers into JPMorgan’s global banking division in more than a decade.
“We have stealthily hired from across the street and we are continuing to hire,” one person close to the process said, underscoring the scale of the campaign.
The effort followed an internal review that combined JPMorgan’s commercial, corporate, and investment banking units last year, part of a strategy to strengthen its presence in healthcare, technology, infrastructure, and middle-market banking. The bank is also prioritizing expansion in Europe and Asia.
While JPMorgan has been aggressively adding talent, it has also lost at least 10 senior bankers to Citi since former global investment banking chief Vis Raghavan defected there in 2024. The battle for talent reflects a wider reshuffling on Wall Street, as major banks compete not only with each other but also with boutique advisory firms such as Evercore and Centerview, which have carved out a growing share of the M&A advisory business.
In recent months, JPMorgan has made several high-profile hires: Jerry Lee from Goldman Sachs as global chair of investment banking, Kamal Jabre from HSBC as vice-chair of M&A in EMEA, and Eduardo Miras, Theo Giatrakos, Keith Heller, and Anthony Diamandakis from Citi.
The push comes as JPMorgan seeks to consolidate its position as the world’s leading investment bank by total fees. The lender reported $4.7bn in investment banking fees in the first half of 2025, compared with $4.1bn at Goldman Sachs and $2.2bn at Citi over the same period.
The campaign also unfolds amid leadership speculation at the top of JPMorgan. Chief executive Jamie Dimon, who has led the bank for nearly 20 years, has yet to set a timeline for departure. Potential successors include Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, co-heads of the commercial and investment bank, and Marianne Lake, head of the consumer bank.
The Financial Times reported that JPMorgan’s surge in hiring significantly outpaced previous years, with more managing directors joining in the past 12 months than in the previous decade combined — a sign of the bank’s determination to outpace its rivals in the next growth phase.
