It’s hard to overstate the importance of the recent announcement by JPMorgan Chase to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on its offices in northern Delaware while maintaining and even growing its workforce.
i have been around long enough to hear about reports of the former Chase being unhappy about being in Delaware It was one of a number of banks that came into the state following the passage of the Financial Center Development Act.
Later came the wave of consolidation among credit card banks that eventually led to the financial giants snapping up what were known as monoline banks like MBNA and First USA.
Enter Jamie Dimon as the CEO of Bank One. Dimon faced the challenge of turning around credit card operations that included First Chicago and First USA. Both had centers in Wilmington and were struggling with credit quality problems. It led to the departure of the CEO who had overseen the expansion into plastic.
Dimon went on to help engineer the merger of Bank One into sprawling JPMorgan Chase. Included was the JPMorgan complex south of Newark that helps move around the world’s money supply.
His make or break challenge as the new JP Morgan Chase CEO was integrating a number of information technology systems from a wave of credit card and bank mergers. That effort was successful.
Under Dimon, JPMorgan Chase avoided many of the problems of rivals like Citi and Wells Fargo. It’s now the largest US financial services company and a major player on the world stage.
Along the way there were ample opportunities to move operations and jobs elsewhere, but Dimon and his management team maintained and expanded the Delaware workforce, making Wilmington the headquarters of its massive credit card operation. The company also opened one of a handful of global technology centers outside Wilmington.
Despite long-running predictions from in-state pundits that taxes and other issues would send the bulk of worker bee banking jobs elsewhere, financial services still employs 47,000 people in Delaware despite waves of cutbacks and restructurings that included Bank of America sharply cutting its headcount in Delaware, post MBNA. Despite the cuts, B of A remains a major employer.
It did not hurt that the industry became more technology-driven, with banks in need of a workforce with specialized skills that were available in this region. Moreover, companies were able to quietly move jobs out of the New York metro area to lower-cost locations like Delaware.
In at least one case (Barclays) plans to move operations elsewhere were revamped, with Delaware winning back some jobs. Meanwhile, online financial services operations started by veterans of the state’s financial services industry, have added hundreds of jobs.
Still, JPMorgan Chase had a lot of options post-Covid and, in the end, chose Delaware – a state where the business environment is far from perfect, (especially for smaller employers) but in no way resembles the hellscape described by our in-state negative Neds and Nancies. – Doug Rainey, chief content officer
