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JPMorgan exec says the bank is ‘broadly comfortable’ with its $50 billion private credit exposure

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As several Wall Street banks reported first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, executives had to answer for their exposure to the private credit market, which has been under a microscope recently.

CFO Jeremy Barnum estimated the bank’s exposure to private credit funds was $50 billion.

“We’re broadly comfortable with it,” Barnum said on a call with analysts. He explained that the $50 billion is part of approximately $160 billion worth of broader exposure to non-bank financial institutions. The private credit market has been under heightened scrutiny for the quality of its loans and for exposure to companies that could be vulnerable to AI disruption. As a result, some retail-oriented investment funds have had higher redemption requests.

When answering a question on private credit, Barnum said that though nothing JPMorgan does is without risk, “this is a space that we’re quite comfortable with as a function of very close scrutiny on the way that we do the business and ensuring that the underwriting is high quality and that we’ve got a bunch of structural protections in place.”

On the call, Dimon said he doesn’t think the risks to the private credit market are systemic, echoing his comments in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month.

“You have to have very large losses in private credit before, at least it looks like, banks are going to get hit,” he said on Tuesday’s call with analysts. “It doesn’t mean you won’t feel some stress and strain, and that you might have to do something about it, but I’m not particularly worried about it.”

Dimon said that the bigger risk, as he sees it, is how a credit cycle will filter through the economy. He predicted that losses would be worse than people anticipate when there is an eventual credit cycle.

Wells Fargo and Citi, which both reported first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, also revealed their exposure to private credit firms. Wells Fargo estimated that its exposure was around $36.2 billion, and Citi said its exposure was $22 billion in their respective earnings presentations.

Many banks also offer investment vehicles for customers who want to invest directly in private credit. JPMorgan is planning to launch the JPMorgan Public and Private Credit Fund, an interval fund open to retail investors that allows quarterly redemptions of 7.5%, according to an SEC filing from last month. Many of the largest private credit managers have recently capped their quarterly withdrawals at 5%, despite investors requesting higher withdrawals.




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JPMorgan says office renovations are coming to accommodate the bank’s ballooning workforce

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JPMorgan says it’s going to do something about its desk problem.

America’s biggest bank, which called its roughly 320,000-person-strong global workforce back to the office five days a week last year, has previously experienced internal tensions over desk availability and parking at some sites, like its major tech campus in Columbus, Ohio.

Now, the firm says it will tackle its office woes head-on.

“If you think about what’s happened to the head count of the company over, say, the last five or six years, it’s grown a lot,” Jeremy Barnum, the firm’s chief financial officer, told shareholders during the bank’s Tuesday earnings call.

“There was the whole return to the office, hot desking, remote work, all the stuff,” he added. “The amount of real estate square footage over that period grew a lot more slowly than headcount.”

But the lack of ample space didn’t deter the company from pushing ahead with its full-time office mandate.

“We’ve realized that it’s obviously the case that we need to provide employees a reasonable in-office experience and that, in some cases, means a little bit of de-densification and catching up on some space renovations around the world,” Barnum continued.


Jamie Dimon stands alongside New York Governor Kathy Hochul and others as he cuts a ribbon to mark the opening of the new JPMorgan Chase global headquarters at 270 Park Avenue.

Jamie Dimon cut the ribbon to mark the opening of JPMorgan’s new global headquarters at 270 Park Avenue on Tuesday.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images



On the call, CEO Jamie Dimon chimed in.

“Don’t scare them,” he told Barnum, presumably about alarming analysts about rising spending. “Real estate,” Dimon said, “is very small numbers.”

The firm has already opened a new state-of-the-art headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in Manhattan — a cutting-edge skyscraper featuring a bevy of restaurants, a luxurious fitness center, and tech that even remembers how you like the temperature when you reserve a conference room.

The bank’s five-day-per-week return-to-office policy proved a heated flashpoint last year, with Dimon famously telling some of the 12,000 staffers at the Columbus site that he suspected remote workers were texting one another during meetings and not completing tasks.

Last spring, a JPMorgan spokesperson told Business Insider that the firm was “working hard to ensure our sites have the capacity and amenities employees need to return full-time.”




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I quit my job at JPMorgan to run a restaurant group with my dad. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kassidy Angelo, a 25-year-old managing director at Gioia Hospitality Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I never imagined myself entering the restaurant business at the age of 24. I majored in American Studies at Georgetown University with the hope of attending law school.

Instead of pursuing a law career, I decided to apply for finance jobs and eventually landed an internship at JPMorgan in New York. Ultimately, I became an analyst in Miami, but I quit after two years.

My dad, an attorney by trade and restaurateur for many years, asked me if I’d ever consider partnering with him on a new venture. He already owned successful restaurants, and I thought this was a unique opportunity to learn from him and pursue my own entrepreneurial path. It’s the best decision I have ever made.

My biggest concern was how working together would change our father-daughter dynamic

Together, my dad and I are attempting to create a new world-class dining experience from the ground up, Daniel’s Steakhouse, in Fort Lauderdale. My dad is 62 years old and already owns several other successful restaurants, so he doesn’t really need to build this brand for himself.

Working with him, I can gain hands-on experience alongside someone who has already mastered the art of entrepreneurship. We’ve always had a close relationship, and I’ve long admired his work ethic; however, I wasn’t sure how it would feel to work side by side, day in and day out.

Before I left my job at JPMorgan, we had a long conversation about expectations and how we wouldn’t only build a strong professional relationship but also maintain the personal closeness we had created throughout my life. He’s an amazing dad and has become an incredible business partner.

If the opportunity to work with my dad had not happened, I probably would have stayed in finance

Working in finance is always a great opportunity to seize. It helped me become more financially literate and gave me a lot of experience working with all types of people.

Ultimately, you’re in a client service role. Private finance, especially, is a people business. Every single day, I communicated with clients, assistants, coworkers, and others, and ultimately, I learned to work as part of a team and how to correspond effectively with high-net-worth individuals. But working in finance has a lot of pressures too.

The analyst role at JPMorgan is intended to be a two-year program. When the opportunity to work with my father came up, I had to make a decision: stay for the full two years and then make the leap, or leave to go through the process of a true restaurant opening.

Ultimately, I realized that if I were going to pursue a career in the restaurant industry, learning the ins and outs of an opening would be the best way to truly understand the business. I viewed it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to work with my dad, but to build something from the ground up.

There are lots of positives, but it’s sometimes difficult to separate work and family

Working with family has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. One of the biggest pros is the amount of quality time I get to spend with my father. He understands my day-to-day, where my head is at, and where I may be struggling, and he’s always in my corner — not just as a resource, but as a true partner.

In terms of cons, I wouldn’t say there’s anything inherently negative, but it can sometimes be hard to find the “off button.” Family dinners, vacations, and time away often circle back to conversations about how we can improve and grow the business.

Being a financial analyst helped prepare me for building a new restaurant

I entered the restaurant industry with less experience, but more authority than I had as an analyst, which is the bottom of the totem pole in finance. Having worked with senior management at JPMorgan, I had the confidence to run the restaurant.

I also believe it was important that I worked for someone else before working with my dad. It taught me how to take constructive criticism, recognize my shortcomings, and develop confidence outside of my family’s influence. On my first day at the restaurant, I learned how to run the door, be a hostess, serve, and run private events. Now, I’m mentoring a woman who works for us, and I work six days a week on the floor, overseeing everything that goes into running a restaurant.

While there may not be the same financial benefits in the short term, and I must work holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, being an entrepreneur allows me to work and live in my home city.

Taking the unknown route can sometimes be the most rewarding

Working at JPMorgan immediately after graduating gave me an instant sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, joining a family business at its foundation was a bigger risk — but one that has been incredibly fulfilling.

I never like to say never to going back to finance, but I truly believe I’ve found my calling in the hospitality world, and doing it alongside my dad makes it even more meaningful.

Do you work with a family member and want to share your story? Please email this editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.




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