JPMorgan names – JPMorgan Chase has created two newly defined co-president roles as CEO Jamie Dimon moves toward a succession plan. Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh were promoted into the posts, with Petno leading the commercial and investment banking division and Rohrbaugh takin
For JPMorgan Chase, the CEO succession question just grew louder—and more personal. On Thursday. the bank announced it would promote two executives to newly created co-president roles as Jamie Dimon’s succession plan takes shape. The announcement landed with a sharp detail: Marianne Lake. CEO of JPMorgan’s consumer and community banking division and widely viewed as a potential successor. has left the company.
Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh now become the face of a new leadership structure. The roles are co-president titles, but they are designed to split the bank’s major business lines. Petno will take on being the only chief executive of JPMorgan’s commercial and investment banking division. Rohrbaugh will take over Lake’s position to lead the consumer and community banking division.
The leadership shift is not just symbolic. Both Petno and Rohrbaugh received one-time retention and continuity awards of $30 million, as described in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Dimon framed the decision in confident terms, saying it “reflects the Board’s confidence in [Petno’s and Rohrbaugh’s] extraordinary leadership capabilities, business performance, relationships, experience, and commitment to always doing the right thing.”
The practical effect is that the pool of contenders seems clearer—yet the end date is still out of reach.
At a JPMorgan investor day in New York City in February. Dimon said he would remain at the company “for a few years as CEO. and maybe a few after that. as executive chairman.” With the co-president appointments. the wait for investors to see who will take over as CEO of the world’s largest bank by market cap just got longer.
Michael Useem. a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. described the stakes in blunt terms. calling JPMorgan’s job “the biggest job in banking.” He pointed to the sheer complexity and the variety of concerns that come with running a mega-bank. saying that “these bigger companies. the complexity and diversity of concerns they have are just unbelievable.” In that setting. he argued that having two leaders who can sit together. respond quickly. and coordinate well is an advantage.
Margarethe Wiersema. a professor at the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. said the company’s co-president announcement offers investors reassurance by creating a clearer pipeline. “It’s always better to have more options than to have just one. ” she said. adding that JPMorgan is “on a very good path.” But she also warned that succession plans can quickly go wrong when companies don’t prepare. She said companies tend to have poor succession plans. which can hurt the business and worry investors—especially as CEO tenure has been shrinking. She cited that the average CEO tenure fell to a low of 7.2 years between the first and third quarters of 2025. and warned that firms without clear succession plans can be blindsided.
She pointed to Heineken earlier this year, when CEO Dolf van den Brink stepped down with no clear successor and investor pressure to hire an outsider for the first time.
Even with structure, Wiersema said co-leadership can bring its own friction. Leaders operating under co-CEO titles. she said. can face unclear roles—calling it “a different animal.” “If it isn’t articulated ahead of time as to who does what. then you’re going to have a conflict. ” she said. “Somebody has to say. ‘you take care of this. and I take care of that.’ There is this issue of who really is the CEO of the company.”.
Lindred Greer. a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. echoed the concern from a different angle: a lack of clarity about “who does what and how to get things done” in a co-leadership setup can set the stage for power struggles. “The power dynamic is inherently unstable and prone to conflict,” Greer said.
Supporters of shared leadership point to numbers. In an analysis of 87 public companies run by co-CEOs between 1996 and 2020, shared leadership generated average annual shareholder returns of 9.5%, compared with 6.9% average for solo CEOs.
Still, the record of co-leadership has been mixed, taking different forms across industries. During the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman Sachs’s Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried served as co-presidents and co-COOs. From November 2021 to January 2023. Salesforce ran under a co-CEO model. but internal tension caused Bret Taylor to step down. leaving Marc Benioff as the company’s sole CEO. Over the last year, Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify have all operated under the co-CEO structure.
JPMorgan, however, is not following the typical playbook of shared command. The bank is building what David Grossman. CEO of internal communications agency The Grossman Group. described as “a succession contest rather than shared leadership.” To investors. that signals the succession plan is moving and narrowing in on two finalists—while keeping a clear timeline absent. “The catch is the part that stays out of the press release,” Grossman said. “There is no finish date yet. Following Dimon is one of the hardest jobs in business. and naming two contenders does not make the final call easier. It just schedules it.”.
Grossman added that this kind of contest has a cost that won’t show up on a balance sheet: the talent that decides not to wait around. “Every time a board elevates two people. it sends a message to everyone who was passed over. and the strongest of them start taking calls. ” he said. He pointed directly to Lake’s departure as “the first example,” while warning that “she may not be the last.”.
The ripple effects can reach beyond the executive suite. Grossman said organizations often copy the dynamics at the top. “An organization copies the relationship at the top,” he said. “Set up a contest, and people pick a side and start playing it.”
JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon CEO succession co-president roles Doug Petno Troy Rohrbaugh Marianne Lake consumer and community banking commercial and investment banking SEC filing retention and continuity awards $30 million