When Paul Bateman, chairman of the board of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and George Gatch, CEO and a 33-year veteran of the bank, told thousands of employees in 2018 that a crisis was coming and it was time to prepare, it seemed like unwarranted negativity.
While stocks seemed frothy after a long bull market, there weren’t any signs it would end anytime soon. But Gatch and Bateman, the former chairman of Robert Fleming Asset Management, which JPMorgan acquired in its 2000 merger with Chase Manhattan, knew a crisis wouldn’t announce itself ahead of time.
The two industry veterans had been through plenty of crises before, and they wanted to develop detailed plans for training employees particularly those who had never been through a downturn and potential marketing campaigns. JPMAM also developed centralized risk management techniques and protocols for whatever was coming next. The manager analyzed and stress tested 22 million positions every day to see how they stood up