BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Jamie Dimon wants JPMorgan Chase to become the biggest bank in the American South. So he summoned his top executives, chartered a bus and set out to explore Dixie.
On a scorching-hot day in Birmingham last week, cheering bank employees at a new Chase branch were corralled outside with bedazzled cardboard signs and a five-man drumline to greet the celebrity bank chief. Dimon ran out of the bus and entered the branch through a “tunnel of love” formed by his employees’ raised arms, before he quizzed staff on what wasn’t working for the bank’s customers.