, Columnist
Jamie Dimon Forgot to Mention Mergers Are Part of the Problem
Pesky regulators, lawyers and shareholders aren't the only ones to blame for public companies' disappearing act.
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For someone who didn't want the Treasury Secretary job, Jamie Dimon sure loves playing the regulation top cop from his pulpit at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He hit at the friction between Washington and Wall Street in his annual letter to the bank's shareholders on Tuesday that in parts had an atypically somber tone about the country and markets. But in a section lamenting the shrinking number of publicly traded companies, Dimon notably left out his own big contribution to the phenomenon: mergers and acquisitions.
The chart below "should be a cause for concern," Dimon wrote. "It notes that the number of public companies in the United States has declined 45 percent since 1996."