WASHINGTON — Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, on Monday will hold a meeting of his board in the nation's capital for the first time, with a special guest scheduled to appear: the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
That marks something of a coup for Dimon, who amid the disgrace of his industry has emerged as President Barack Obama's favorite banker, and in turn, the envy of his Wall Street rivals. It also reflects a good return on what Dimon has dubbed his company's "seventh line of business" — government relations.
The business of better influencing Washington, begun in late 2007, was jump-started just as the financial crisis hit and the capital displaced New York as the nation's money center. Then Obama's election brought to power Chicago Democrats well-known to Dimon from his recent years running a bank there.
One of them is Emanuel, who has accepted the invitation to speak to the board pending a review by the White House counsel. The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, declined out of concern that he would be seen as too cozy with a company that has numerous business issues before the department, an administration official said.
"It's a very nice thing for the board to have happen," said the chief of a major financial company. "But you'd have to have a lot of influence to pull it off."
Dimon and his company enjoy a prominence in the city's K Street lobbying world that parallels their recent rise on Wall Street; JPMorgan went into the crisis stronger than most rivals and last week reported robust quarterly gains that confirmed its place at the top of the heap.
With the crisis, Dimon, a longtime Democratic donor, has become even more politically engaged, in the process becoming perhaps the most credible voice of a discredited industry. Other onetime giants like Citigroup and Bank of America find themselves muted as wards of the state.
JPMorgan gave back its bailout money quickly, though like all the country's big banks it still benefits from government loan guarantees and lending facilities.
He is "one of the few Democratic CEOs in that line of work," said Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House banking committee. "And look, he's been less impaired by failure than some of the others, so that's given him a kind of lead role."
