Dimon's Grand Design

One recent winter night, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM ) pulled out the stops for a lavish bash at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Among the 200 or so guests were such luminaries as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL ) CEO Steven P. Jobs. It was as much a celebration of the bank as it was a fund-raiser for the Global Fund for Women. After years of consolidation, JPMorgan has amassed more than $1 trillion in assets, only the second U.S. bank ever to get so big. From the podium, Walter V. Shipley, 70, the long-retired chairman of Chase Manhattan Corp., asked rhetorically: "Who here even remembers what the market cap of Manufacturers Hanover was when it merged with Chemical Bank" -- the deal that set the ball rolling toward the creation of JPMorgan Chase 15 years later.

At the head table, banking brainiac Jamie Dimon blurted out the answer: $1.9 billion. It was classic Dimon. JPMorgan's president and chief operating officer is often first to the punch, knows his numbers cold, and is unabashed about making that loud and clear. He also has an uncanny knack of inadvertently upstaging the main event. Dimon spent more than 15 years at Citigroup (C ) and its predecessors as right hand to Sanford "Sandy" I. Weill and three years as CEO of Chicago's once-troubled Bank One Corp. The 49-year-old Dimon's obsession with detail and disdain for waste made him a corporate legend. General Electric Co. (GE ) had Neutron Jack Welch. JPMorgan has its Hatchet Man.