2012-10-06nytimes.com

That day, Dimon took the opportunity, according to a bank employee in attendance, to try to inspire his team, to rouse them from the industrywide sense of malaise. Yes, there were challenges, Dimon said, but it was the job of leadership to be strong. They should be prudent, but step up -- be bold. He looked out into the audience, where Ina Drew, the 54-year-old chief investment officer, was sitting at one of the tables. "Ina," he said, singling her out, "is bold."

Perhaps by now when bankers hear that kind of public praise, they simultaneously hear a distant clanging, a dim alarm that provokes an undercurrent of anxiety. It seems inevitable that an acknowledgment of such star power will eventually lead to a fall, a big one, and one year and three months later, Drew succumbed. Her team had been bold, so bold that along with Dimon, she had become the public face attached to a $6 billion mistake, a trading loss so startling in size that it dominated the business press, put Dimon on the defensive and cost Drew her job



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