Wall Street giant JPMorgan has set up a Donald Trump ‘war room’ as the 47th president announces a flurry of new policies upon returning to the White House, according to one of its top executives.
Mary Erdoes, the head of the bank’s asset and wealth management unit, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an Alpine talking shop for the self-styled global elite, that the Jamie Dimon-led lender is bracing itself for major changes under Trump.
“We have a war room set up to analyze and evaluate each and every one of these (policies),” Erdoes said. “They’ve been up all night and are working on it. Time will tell.”
Her comments came after the 78-year-old’s second presidential inauguration on Monday; Trump moved to revoke nearly 80 executive actions by his predecessor Joe Biden hours after taking office.
He campaigned last year on threatening to slap huge tariffs on US trading partners such as Mexico and Canada raising the possibility of potential trade and market turbulence.
But Erdoes, a JPMorgan veteran who joined the firm in1996, said she saw signs that the new administration is set to be a boon for American businesses.
She told the Davos panel that the new commander-in-chief is keen to create a “very pro-business environment” and that “animal spirits are alive” setting the US economy to “go mode” at present.
The 57-year-old also praised Trump for his decision to order all US government workers back to the office in a sweeping crackdown on the permissive and cushy coronavirus perks of the Biden administration.
“Thank God the U.S. government has done it, and hopefully that’ll keep us ahead of other governments in the world so we can continue to compete.”
JPMorgan recently ordered its staff back into the office, sparking outrage from some employees.
Seen as a possible successor to current CEO Dimon, Erdoes slammed the previous administration for strangling the financial industry with red tape.
The Harvard Business School alum expressed hope that Trump would pare back some of the rules.
“If you look at the last administration and the number of new, significant regulations, it was eight times the number of significant new regulations versus the prior Trump administration,” she said.
“With that comes multiple millions of man-hours of paperwork. Work that clogs up the system and stops the economy from continuing to have that very healthy flywheel. So we’re really looking forward to that,” Erdoes added. “Hopefully that will keep us ahead of other governments in the world so we can continue to compete.”
JPMorgan’s Dimon has repeatedly singled out the so-called Basel III rules, a global blueprint that demands banks to hold more emergency capital on their books so they can weather any financial storms.
Critics argue that diverts financing away from potentially profit-making loans, reducing access to credit for people and businesses who need it.
The majority of Trump’s Cabinet nominees are yet to be confirmed with the new administration’s plans to shake up the banking industry still unclear.
The Post revealed in November how senior aides from the then-Trump transition team had spoken to JPMorgan’s Dimon to use the 68-year-old banking titan as “a sounding board” for the new administration’s economic policies.
A report by last month’s Wall Street Journal suggested the president is mulling whether to abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a US government agency that guarantees deposits in US banks, and shift that responsility to the Treasury Department.
It also said that Trump could ax the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that angered many Wall Street executives during Biden’s term in office.
A group of major banks sued the CFPB last month over a rule, set to take effect in October 2025, that limits the amount they can charge in overdraft fees.
