Jamie Dimon is doubling down on JPMorgan's DEI work as a conservative group targets Wall Street: 'Bring them on'
Jamie Dimon looking off into the distance.
Jamie Dimon highlighted JPMorgan Chase's diversity, equity, and inclusivity commitments.Win McNamee/Getty
  • Jamie Dimon reaffirmed JPMorgan's DEI commitments after pressure from an activist shareholder.

  • One group wants JPMorgan to revisit how compensation is tied to the company's racial-equity goal.

  • Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending DEI programs in the federal government.

Jamie Dimon is doubling down on JPMorgan's diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments amid pressure from an activist shareholder.

In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan CEO said the bank was continuing to push ahead with its DEI work and environmental, social, and governance policies.

"Bring them on," Dimon said about activist efforts. "We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."

Dimon is known for working on both sides of the political aisle. In 2020, JPMorgan announced a $30 billion program aimed at working on racial equity in personal finance, a move that came as other financial institutions made significant commitments to similar causes. JPMorgan's program included mortgage refinancing and working with historically Black colleges and universities.

Dimon's comments at Davos came after the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit, proposed this month that JPMorgan revisit how executive compensation is tied to the company's racial-equity goal.

JPMorgan started an "accountability framework" in 2020 to assess executives' progress toward DEI goals, which affects compensation. The firm doesn't publicly break out what proportion of executive pay, including for Dimon, is tied to DEI work.

JPMorgan and NLPC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

NLPC has sent shareholder proposals focused on climate, China, and other issues to major companies in recent years.

In a different interview with CNBC on Wednesday, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, said that he'd seen news of shareholder proposals but that he hadn't yet looked at any of them.

"We're advising our clients to think about these things," Solomon said. "They think about decarbonization, they think about climate transition. They think about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."

Goldman Sachs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Shareholder proposals — about any subject — do not always end up on companies' ballots. Proposals against ESG, including those against DEI, that came to a vote have garnered little support in the past four years, a review by the shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services found.