Wall Street’s defense of its DEI initiatives suddenly got a lot more complicated.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, a longtime advocate of diversity and using bank resources to aid minority communities, told employees this past week during a town hall that he “was never a firm believer in bias training” and had questions about money being spent on certain DEI programs.
“I saw how we were spending money on some of this stupid shit, and it really pissed me off,” Dimon said, according to a recording of the town hall reported by Bloomberg. “I’m just going to cancel them. I don’t like wasted money in bureaucracy.”
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Michel Euler/Pool via REUTERS ·REUTERS / Reuters
Dimon was not specific about what he would cancel. He also said the bank’s approach to Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ communities would not change, and that any plans for certain DEI initiatives were unrelated to Donald Trump’s election as president.
What was notable about Dimon’s new comments is how outspoken he has been about his willingness to fight outside efforts to change JPMorgan’s DEI policies.
“Bring them on,” Dimon said about activist efforts targeting DEI during an interview with CNBC last month.
Some of the biggest companies on Wall Street, including JPMorgan, are increasingly targets of conservative activists seeking changes to DEI policies across corporate America.
Over the past year, such pressure has contributed to DEI retreats at a number of other high-profile companies, including Meta (META), Walmart (WMT), McDonald’s (MCD), Lowe’s (LOW), Ford (F), Tractor Supply (TSCO), John Deere (DE), and Target (TGT).
Many of these retreats were influenced by a recent US Supreme Court decision on affirmative action at colleges and universities, a ruling that prompted conservative groups to ramp up their efforts to eliminate diverse hiring practices.
Corporate diversity goals are also coming under intensifying scrutiny in Washington, D.C. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that ends federal DEI programs and another that called for US agencies to “combat illegal private sector DEI actions.”
“My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense,” Trump told business leaders and politicians last month during a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, the National Legal and Policy Center, and the Heritage Foundation have all submitted shareholder proposals seeking changes or deeper examinations of practices at several big banks.
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NCPPR and NLPC submitted anti-DEI proposals to Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan, while Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) got proposals from NLPC and Heritage asking for audits of how the banks treat customers with certain political beliefs.
Robby Starbuck, who built a social media following by criticizing companies for their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, has also set JPMorgan in his sights.
“JPMorgan … they are going to end up being a target for us,” the conservative Latino activist told Yahoo Finance recently.
A spokesman for JPMorgan said this past week that the company’s outlook on DEI isn’t changing but that the company “regularly review[s] and make appropriate adjustments to policies and programs, including in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in 2023.”
The DEI “moniker means different things to different people,” but for JPMorgan, it is “about doing what we’ve done for decades — trying our best to ensure that every customer and employee has a fair opportunity and that we serve communities and grow our company,” the JPMorgan spokesman said.
JPMorgan’s crosstown New York rival, Goldman, revealed a DEI change of its own this past week. It dropped a pledge to avoid taking a company public if that company had an all-white male board.
Goldman’s Tony Fratto, global head of corporate communications, said in a statement that “as a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy.”
Goldman would not comment on whether it plans to hold firm on its other DEI policies posted on its website, which include advancing diversity along race, gender, and sexual orientation lines within hiring, employee mentorship and networks, vendor selection, and capital allocation.
Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan. (Spencer Grant/GHI/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) ·UCG via Getty Images
Goldman said that even though its IPO mandate is now gone, it still plans to offer its board diversity initiative to interested clients through its major global banking and markets division.
“We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this approach,” Fratto said.
The conservative activist asking Goldman’s shareholders to approve an audit of the Wall Street giant’s DEI policies said the retreat doesn’t go far enough.
“Had they come to us first and said, ‘would you withdraw your proposal if we do this,’ I think we would pretty easily have said ‘yes’,” Stefan Padfield, executive director of National Center for Public Policy Research’s (NCPPR) Free Enterprise Project, told Yahoo Finance.
NCPPR has already notched one prominent Wall Street win. It was a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit that resulted in a December ruling that rejected Nasdaq’s requirement that companies on its exchange set racial and gender targets.
The group, which engaged with Goldman earlier this year, is asking the bank to conduct an independent third-party “racial discrimination” audit analyzing Goldman’s “legal and reputational risks stemming from its race-based initiatives.”
The IPO pledge abandoned by Goldman was among those initiatives highlighted by NCPPR. But it wants more changes.
Now “if they come back to the table and ask us to withdraw the proposal, we’re going to have to have additional movement because they’ve already committed to do this, and they did not talk to us,” Padfield added.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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