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The reigning king of Wall Street wears two crowns — and he plans to keep it that way.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has no intention of relinquishing his chairmanship, insiders say, despite renewed calls from a group of shareholders to split the roles at the nation’s biggest lender.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a granddaddy of public employee unions, as well as New York City and Connecticut pension funds, are pressuring the bank in the wake of its $6 billion “London Whale” trading blunder.
The shareholders, which hold about $1 billion worth of bank shares, say the move would help to avoid a repeat of last year’s debacle, which led the board to slash Dimon’s pay in half.
JPMorgan officials, though, don’t want to go as far as splitting the roles, saying their boss steered the bank successfully through the financial crisis and is well suited for both jobs.
Still, the chorus of shareholders seeking to strip him of his chairmanship has grown louder in the wake of the whopping trading loss that Dimon initially dismissed as a “tempest in a teapot.”
“Now we have a larger coalition of shareholders [who want to see the jobs split],” Lisa Lindsley, director of capital strategies at AFSCME, told The Post.
“The London Whale scandal demonstrated a lack of oversight and internal controls,” she added.
Last year, Goldman Sachs agreed to a compromise and appointed a lead director after AFSCME made a similar call to split the chairman and CEO roles.
Also joining the dissenters is Hermes Equity Ownership Services.
“Unchecked risk-taking and oversight failures have cost JPMorgan more than $6 billion in losses and seriously damaged its reputation,” New York City Comptroller John Liu said in a statement.
Even before the London Whale scandal surfaced in May, a similar proposal last year received a relatively high 40 percent approval from shareholders.
With that in mind, Lindsley and others expect that a higher percentage of shareholders will vote in favor of the split at the bank’s annual meeting in the spring. A date has yet to be set.
“Even a Master of the Universe can be swallowed by a London Whale,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement.
Regardless, JPMorgan is unlikely to make changes to its leadership structure. That’s due in part to the fact that the so-called advisory proposal is symbolic and not legally binding.
What’s more, the bank’s board believes that Dimon’s ability to ring up record profits will be his best defense, insiders say.
The 11-member board is overseen by presiding director Lee Raymond, the former Exxon chief executive. The directors are considered independent with the exception of Dimon.
Critics, though, believe it’s not enough.
JPMorgan’s reputation also has been dinged by money-laundering accusations and an interest-rate rigging scandal that has ensnared a number of banks.