This book tells the untold story of how JPMorgan became a universal bank in the 1980s-1990s and
the events leading to it being acquired by Chase in 2000. It depicts the challenges Morgan's
leaders - Lew Preston and Dennis Weatherstone - confronted when the firm's business model was
disrupted by the developing country debt crisis and premier corporate borrowers increasingly
accessing capital markets up to its current management with Jamie Dimon. It depicts what
happened to Morgan in the larger story of U.S. banking consolidation. As Morgan sought to
re-enter the world of securities and navigate around Glass-Steagall barriers their overriding
goal was to ensure it would remain a pre-eminent wholesale bank serving multinational
corporations. Opportunities to grow through acquisition were presented and considered
including purchasing a stake in Citibank in the early 1990s. However Preston and Weatherstone
were reluctant to integrate areas unfamiliar to Morgan such as retail banking or to assimilate
cultures that were disparate from the firm's. This first-hand account explores whether Morgan
could have stayed independent had its leaders pursued the strategic plan that called for it to
make targeted acquisitions in areas where it had well-established businesses. Instead in the
mid-1990s it went from being the hunter to the hunted. Rival banks that had been burdened by
bad loans to developing countries and commercial real estate capitalized on rising share prices
during the tech boom to acquire other institutions. Meanwhile Morgan's profits and share price
lagged which left it vulnerable. During this time all of the leading financial institutions
struggled to change their business models. In the end no U.S. money center bank was able to
become a universal bank on its own. What ensued was a growing concentration of financial assets
in a handful of institutions that was the precursor to the 2008 financial crisis which is
explored further using Morgan as a lens in a book that is sure to interest banking and Wall
Street professionals and business readers alike.
