Jamie Dimon is hanging on. Who will wait it out?

• JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon was awarded a new stock option and must stick around for five years to collect.
• Dimon, Wall Street’s longest-serving CEO, has repeatedly said he’s within five years of retiring.
• Here’s what his delayed plans could mean for his prospective successors.

Jamie Dimon’s always been coy about how long he’ll stick around at JPMorgan. And it seems the bank’s board isn’t in a hurry to let him go either.

The billionaire 65-year-old leader of JPMorgan — the longest-serving CEO at a big Wall Street bank — received 1.5 million stock appreciation rights from the firm on Tuesday.

The catch? He’ll have to be CEO for at least five more years to cash in on the compensatory award, which has a 10-year vesting period and will be exercisable from July 20, 2026.

It’s an ironic timeline, given that Dimon has become known for saying he’s planning to retire within the next five years; he gave that timeline in 2018 and again in 2020.

Wall Street in recent months has taken a renewed interest in Dimon’s retirement plans and who will succeed him.

A leadership shakeup in May put the spotlight on two potential front-runners: Marianne Lake, the consumer-lending chief, and Jennifer Piepszak, the chief financial officer, were tapped to lead the massive consumer-and-community-banking business. Another would-be top pick, Gordon Smith, a former consumer-bank head, co-president, and co-COO, announced his surprise retirement when Lake and Piepszak were promoted. Smith is set to leave the firm at the end of the year.

Last month, Dimon declined to say whether he’d be in the CEO role for five more years but did say he wouldn’t retire in the next two or three.

“I intend to stay, which is sanctioned by the board, for a significant amount of time,” Dimon told the Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck at a conference on June 14. “I think you put in your report several years. Significant means more than that.”

JPMorgan directors said in a regulatory filing that this week’s special award “reflects the board’s desire for Mr. Dimon to continue to lead the firm for a further significant number of years.”

Dimon has outlasted execs who were once seen as successors

The award adds a layer of complexity to succession planning at JPMorgan and raises questions about whether Lake and Piepszak — who are both in their early 50s — and Daniel Pinto, 58, a co-president and co-COO, will stick around at the firm and in the CEO race.

“It’s also interesting because this does send a signal that it may still be at least 5 years before Dimon is ready to give up the reins, and if Lake or Piepszak leave, it wouldn’t be the first time a key deputy has left the firm,” the Morningstar analyst Eric Compton told Insider via email.

He pointed to several people who’d been said to be in the running to succeed Dimon but eventually left: Charlie Scharf, a former CEO of retail financial services who’s now CEO of Wells Fargo; Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh, now CFO of Comcast Corporation; James Staley, an investment-bank CEO who’s now chief executive of Barclays; Bill Winters, an investment-bank cohead who’s now CEO of Standard Chartered; COO Matt Zames, who until March had been president of the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital; and Thasunda Duckett, a consumer-bank CEO who’s now president and CEO of TIAA.

Still, Jeff Harte, an analyst at Piper Sandler, said that succession planning at JPMorgan was unique among Wall Street firms because there are so many talented executives in the running to replace Dimon.

“The defining characteristic is the depth of the bench of management beneath Jamie,” he told Insider in an interview. “There are so many executives that could have replaced him but wound up going elsewhere, and even more that have been trained by him to step in when that day finally comes, although it won’t be anytime soon.”

Harte added that long-serving CEOs often will start to look tired or worn out, or like they’re no longer as focused on their jobs — but he doesn’t see that happening at JPMorgan.

“He strikes me as someone who has fun doing what he loves to do, with no plans to retire anytime soon,” he said.

A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment to Insider for this story, pointing to Dimon’s public comments and board comments in annual proxy statements.

A longer-than-expected retirement timeline could also create openings for younger up-and-comers or executives like Mary Callahan Erdoes, the head of asset and wealth management, or Chief Information Officer Lori Beer, who have both been named as potential successors but receive less attention than Lake and Piepszak.

“Nothing is for sure, but this is an interesting development that does seem to tilt the future towards a ‘longer wait’ rather than ‘Dimon is ready to retire soon,'” Compton said.