Courtesy of Benzinga.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM)’s CEO Jamie Dimon committed to investing $100 million in the city of Detroit back in 2014.
Detroit is considered by some to be America’s comeback city and is also home to Benzinga’s headquarters.
Dimon said in an interview with Bloomberg that he would have committed to investing in America’s “comeback city” for moral reasons alone, as the city did not experience the same level of growth that many other cities have seen over the decades.
“It’s an important town for us,” the bank executive said. “It’s probably one of the only towns in America that really did not have a renaissance in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. So, this has been a train wreck we all knew was coming for about 20 years.”
Tough Job For Detroit’s Mayor
Dimon noted that Detroit’s mayor Mike Duggan and Gov. Rick Snyder continue to face obstacles on many fronts, including a lack of jobs, affordable housing and housing for commercial markets.
The leadership team in Detroit has certainly earned Dimon’s respect for bringing executive leadership styles to government.
“He had to get hope back,” Dimon said. “We had to bring businesses back. He had to build affordable housing. He had to get training, get schools, get the police, the sanitation, the sidewalks. And you know, this man — with a smile — set up all these things like we would have done in business: the war room for lights, the war room for sanitation, the war room for this and that, constantly tracking it all. And it’s working.”
Where JPMorgan Fits In
Dimon went on to tell a story of how the bank can provide benefits to the city. Peter Scher, JPMorgan’s head of corporate responsibility worked with the city to get rid of 70,000 blighted homes.
The bank went on to fund a project in which individuals can use their smartphones and tablets to take a picture and geolocate a home. The end result is that 10,000 blighted homes have been shut down.
“If you can start up entrepreneurs, that helps the whole community,” Dimon proclaimed. “We try to think more how venture capital helps this get going: working with the governor, the mayor, all the city, the not-for-profits here. We also had our people come. We provided data, analytics, money, advice, consulting, all the things you need to get things off the ground. It’s been a fabulous effort.”
Image Credit: By World Economic Forum (Flickr: The Global Financial Context: James Dimon) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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