Jamie Dimon Needed a Raise to Make Up for the Rough Year He's Had

Maybe the first thing to say about Jamie Dimon's pay raise, from $11.5 million in 2012 to $20 million in 2013, is "accrual accounting." Oh sure, JPMorgan paid "approximately $20 billion in penalties" since his last annual performance review. But most of those fines were incurred in earlier years -- naughty mortgage selling (2005-2007), mainly, with a side salad of London Whale (2012ish) and a bowl of Madoff enabling (1990s-2008) for dessert -- so it's no fair to dock Jamie Dimon's 2013 pay because of them. So far, 2013 seems to have been a year relatively free of fines.1

Of course, Dimon got paid $27 million in 2006 and $30 million in 2007, when the biggest fines were incurred.2 So you can't push that theory too far. It would imply that the only time Dimon can be penalized for legal scandals is if they occur and are resolved within a single calendar year. (Or if the board clawed back compensation from previous years, which, hahahaha.3) On the other hand, he got no bonus and a paltry $1 million total compensation in 2008, when he bought Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, which brought with them their own exciting collection of (eventual) fines. And last year his pay was cut in half to $11.5 million for the Whale thing. Just as JPMorgan was mostly reserved for its 2013 fines, so, in his way, was Dimon.