JPMorgan week, ESG ratings are back, AI doublespeak
Story of the Week (DR):
JP Morgan’s news week
The Lurid Lawsuit, Salami Scandal and Trash-Can Thief Vexing JPMorgan’s PR Department AND Meme of 'JPMorgan's HR Department in 2026' Has People in Stitches Amid Sex Scandal and Knicks Bin Incident
She Stole a Knicks Trash Can Off the Street and Lost Her Job at JPMorgan
The Trash Bin That Cost Her Career: Who Is Angie Báez? JPMorgan DEI Executive Fired After Viral Knicks Parade Video
The Trash-Can Thief: Angie Báez, an Executive Director of Community and Industry Engagement at the bank, was captured on a viral video during the New York Knicks championship parade emptying a public trash bin onto a Manhattan sidewalk so she could steal the limited-edition, blue-and-orange Knicks-themed container.
The Resolution: JPMorgan quickly terminated her employment after the video went viral. Báez eventually returned the trash bin and was issued $175 in sanitation fines.
But what kinds of thing DON’T get you fired and get you fined?
In 2023, JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $290 million (1,657,143x) settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. The bank was accused of actively ignoring glaring red flags and helping bankroll Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation for 15 years.
Internal documents and later congressional probes revealed that the bank processed roughly 4,700 suspicious transactions totaling $1.1 billion for Epstein. They failed to file a single Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) until after his death.
Who Kept Their Job? Mary Erdoes: The Head of Asset & Wealth Management was fully aware of Epstein’s status as a high-risk sex offender, reviewed his account, and was directly implicated in internal communications regarding his status. She faced zero professional demotions and remains one of the top candidates to eventually succeed Jamie Dimon as CEO.
In 2020, JPMorgan Chase entered a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a record $920 million (5,257,143x) to settle federal charges of market manipulation.
For nearly a decade, traders on JPMorgan’s precious metals and U.S. Treasuries desks engaged in "spoofing"—placing tens of thousands of fake, deceptive orders to artificially move market prices and maximize their own profits. The FBI stated that traders "openly disregarded U.S. laws."
While a couple of mid-to-high-level traders (like Michael Nowak and Gregg Smith) were later criminally convicted and sentenced to prison, the executive leadership team responsible for supervising them and implementing compliance programs suffered no casualties. Top management stayed perfectly secure, chalking the multi-million dollar fraud up as the work of a few "bad apples."
The Salami Scandal: Veteran wealth manager Brent Bodner was fired by JPMorgan in 2024 after he expensed a $642.50 deli platter (containing wings, sandwiches, and salads) for a Super Bowl gathering at his Beverly Hills home. The bank accused him of intentionally misclassifying a personal party as a pre-approved business meeting.
Bodner counter-sued, jokingly dubbing the controversy the "salami incident." He argued that the event was a legitimate client-acquisition dinner that only two prospects ended up attending, and that the minor coding error was used as a pretext to push him out.
The Resolution: A FINRA arbitration panel sided heavily with Bodner, ruling that JPMorgan acted preemptively out of paranoia that brokers were leaving for rivals. The panel ordered JPMorgan to pay Bodner $4.25 million in damages.
The Lurid Lawsuit: Chirayu Rana, a former vice president on JPMorgan's leveraged finance team, leveled highly salacious allegations against his female supervisor, Executive Director Lorna Hajdini. Rana’s lawsuit alleges he was subjected to a campaign of racial discrimination, severe harassment, and forced sexual relations under the threat of having his career sabotaged.
The Resolution: Rana rejected a $1M settlement offer, countering with a demand for up to $22 million before escalating the fight to court. Both Hajdini and JPMorgan strongly deny the allegations as entirely fabricated, and the legal battle is moving toward a highly publicized trial.
JPMorgan Chase promotes Petno, Rohrbaugh to copresidents, setting up two more successors for Dimon
The Wait to Replace Jamie Dimon Keeps Getting Longer: Another potential successor, Marianne Lake, is leaving JPMorgan, as the longstanding chief executive enters his third decade atop the bank.
How JPMorgan went from 3 female CEO contenders to an all-male succession race
JPMorgan named Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, current co-heads of the bank's commercial and investment bank, as co-presidents, setting them up as the frontrunners to succeed longtime CEO Jamie Dimon. Their promotions, the bank said in a press release, "are part of the Board's ongoing succession planning process."
Petno and Rohrbaugh were among a handful of powerhouse candidates poised to succeed Dimon, including Jennifer Piepszak, chief operating officer, Marianne Lake, CEO of the commercial bank, and Mary Erdoes, CEO of asset and wealth management.
Marianne Lake, a Potential Dimon Successor, Leaves JPMorgan
One-time Retention and Continuity equity awards to the following Operating Committee members:
Doug Petno, Co-President and CEO of the Commercial & Investment Bank, and Troy Rohrbaugh, Co-President and CEO of Consumer & Community Banking, in the amount of $30M each;
Mary Erdoes, CEO of Asset & Wealth Management, and Jennifer Piepszak, Chief Operating Officer, in the amount of $20M each.
JPMorgan Chase unveils $50 billion buyback, Goldman Sachs raises dividend after Fed stress test
A 6 year study shows which CEOs are pushing RTO mandates: The ones with the biggest egos
Fortune 500 bosses demanding staff return to the office share one trait: narcissism, research finds
A six-year study tracking corporate executives revealed that strict return-to-office (RTO) mandates are heavily driven by narcissism and executive ego, rather than actual employee productivity
Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant noted that researchers used reliable corporate proxies to quantify CEO narcissism, including the oversized scale of their compensation packages, the size of their signatures, and the prominence of their photos in company annual reports.
The data showed that leaders with highly inflated self-opinions consistently coveted maximum power and status, making them the most aggressive opponents of remote work.
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan pushed hard for a 5-day-a-week return to the office. Why they’re now letting employees work from home
GameStop CEO Cohen spurns $35 billion pay plan to focus on plan to buy eBay
GameStop CEO on His eBay Pursuit: ‘I’m Not Going to Stop, I’m Not Going to Go Away’
GameStop unveiled a compensation package worth roughly $35B for Ryan Cohen in January, hinging on a turnaround that requires him to lift the struggling company's market value more than tenfold and sharply boost its profit.
In May, Cohen surprised Wall Street with an unsolicited offer to buy eBay for roughly $56 billion in cash and stock to turn the e-commerce company into a bigger competitor to Amazon.
EBay's board rejected the proposal, calling the offer "neither credible nor attractive."
Cohen argued that he doesn't want the package so that GameStop's leadership can fully focus on its operating performance and the planned acquisition.
SpaceX handed lowest possible ESG rating by MSCI: Triple C score puts Elon Musk’s company on par with Russia after 2022 invasion of Ukraine
Musk 'most obvious risk' following SpaceX's lowest possible ESG rating
“Board of Directors: The SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES board currently has an independent majority, which enables it to more effectively fulfill its critical function of overseeing management on behalf of shareholders. The company has failed to split the roles of CEO and chairman, which may limit the board's independence from current management interests. Split CEO and chairman roles are characteristic of 67% of companies in this market.”
Welltower CFO’s $167 million pay package sets new record
Welltower’s Tim McHugh is the new highest-paid finance chief among the biggest U.S. companies. His $167 million pay package in 2025 not only dwarfs that of his CFO peers but also outpaces the compensation of many CEOs.
McHugh’s pay at Welltower, a real-estate investment trust focused on rental housing for seniors, surpasses the $139 million compensation package received by Tesla’s Vaibhav Taneja in 2024. This puts him more than $135 million above Alphabet’s Anat Ashkenazi, the next highest-paid CFO in 2025. And it secures him a spot in the club of executives making $100 million or more, a group that remains rare.
Here’s what the article DID NOT MENTION: CEO Shankh Mitra: $821M
Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):
DR: Scientists Say New Method Turns Coffee Grounds Into High-Potency Renewable Fuel
According to a press release from South Korea’s National Research Council of Science and Technology, a team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) have developed a method to convert spent coffee waste into high-quality charcoal, known as biochar.
While that’s a feat in and of itself, the kicker is the method’s blistering speed: it takes just 90 seconds from start to finish, with no drawn-out drying process or oil separation required. According to the release, the new technique solves a major issue in extracting the latent energy potential of spent coffee beans.
DR: Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate DR MM
The bill would incrementally increase the minimum wage from its current rate of $7.25, with the first jump to $12 an hour in the first year of enactment. Major corporations would have six years to work up to a $25 minimum wage, while smaller employers would have a 13-year runway. The legislation would also do away with subminimum wages for tipped workers, such as restaurant servers, youth workers and workers with disabilities. Nearly half of the American workforce makes less than $25 an hour.
DR: Federal judge blocks new law aimed at ESG, DEI investing decisions
A federal judge has blocked Kansas from enforcing a new law that requires institutional investment advisers to make certain disclosures when recommending against company management on issues, including environmental, social and governance principles.
U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of law enacted last session that two major national institutional investment advisers said was unconstitutional because it discriminated based on speech.
MM: MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America’s $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Assholiest of the Week (MM):
CEO SPEED ROUND - ONE HEADLINE, ONE CEO, ONE LINER
Tim Cook - It’s pretty sweet to quit your job and let the new guy fight the union: Apple closed America's first unionized store and blocked workers from transfers — now the union is fighting back
Jamie Dimon - It was easy - we just pointed to the ones with boobs and said “Not you”: How JPMorgan went from 3 female CEO contenders to an all-male succession race
Zuck - The best thing about being a little man king with no accountability is I can randomly change and unchange and rechange my mind… about people’s lives: Meta pauses an AI training program that tracks employees' keystrokes after an internal leak
Larry Fink - Have you SEEN the size of my signature??? Fucking come to work: A 6 year study shows which CEOs are pushing RTO mandates: The ones with the biggest egos
“In the six-year study, researchers collected data on Fortune 500 CEOs, using behavioral proxies—signature size, photo size in annual reports, pay gap relative to peers—to construct narcissism scores. The higher the score, the more likely a CEO was to publicly oppose remote and hybrid work and seek additional status (like a board chairmanship). In a separate experiment, CEOs whose egos were primed—by reflecting on the assertive leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison—showed significantly greater opposition to working from home than a control group”
Andy Jassy - Now we know EXACTLY when you’re wasting our time peeing in a bottle instead of working: Amazon is on a mission to optimize warehouse work. Its latest test puts wearable devices on support staff.
Nikesh Arora - If you just said, “Who?”, you better pay attention because I have important things to say: Palo Alto Networks CEO: We're in 'a Darwinian moment' where employees have to prove their AI skills - BRONZE ASSHOLE
Satya Nadella - If I complain about how everyone TALKS about AI, does that make me sound more sympathetic?: Microsoft's CEO Takes Aim At AI Companies: 'We Have To Walk The Walk' To Convince The Public - GOLDEN ASSHOLE
Jeff Bezos - I mean, if I’m honest, everyone is terrible and should be laid off: Jeff Bezos Called Washington Post His Worst Investment and Staff He Laid Off ‘Terrible’ People - SILVER ASSHOLE
Brian Moynihan - I mean, or your kid was late to school because they forgot to make their card for teacher appreciation day, you didn’t eat breakfast, and you rushed in to work from the office as fast as you could because working from home isn’t allowed anymore: By 7 a.m., Bank of America’s CEO has already read 5 newspapers, his email inbox, and hit the gym—he says if you’re late to meetings, you’re ‘selfish’
Dave Ramsey - 0.0001% of Musk’s worst day could end hunger ON EARTH, but sure, take away Halloween and pets from the rest of us: Dave Ramsey Says 20% of Americans' Halloween and Pet Budgets Could End Hunger: 'There'd Be No Hungry Kids'
Headliniest of the Week
A popular password manager was hit by a hack. What you need to know—and how to keep your data safe
MM: Ryanair says it will reluctantly not charge parents to sit next to children
MM: Elon Musk will get a billion shares of SpaceX if he can settle a million humans on Mars
Just make it 10 trillion shares if he can safely land Gus who sleeps at the bus station on Neptune
Who Won the Week?
DR: The MotherS(C)hIp
MM: ESG Ratings
Predictions
DR: Symbolically giving up your $35 billion CEO pay package becomes the new $1 salary: proxy statements will say: “Our CEO generously waived his $35 billion pay package as a gesture of sacrifice to lead by example, preserve corporate cash, and show solidarity with displaced workers and stressed stakeholders.”
MM: Ryanair announces a new fee children can pay to sit AWAY from their parents
