Regulators should lower go-public hurdles, says Dimon

Regulators in the US and UK should make it easier for companies to go public, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said.

“It is important that policymakers understand that here and in the United States we have made it hard to go public,” Dimon said Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview from London. He pointed to the dropoff in research into smaller companies and rising expenses from litigation and regulatory filings.

Dimon said it’s “odd” that there’s been no commensurate rise in IPOs with the surge in public market valuations. He added, however, that there’s a growing IPO backlog — though that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll happen.

“I think it would be incumbent for us to make it easier and cheaper to go public, and we have to figure out a way to do that,” Dimon said.

In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon also said more midsize banks in the US should be allowed to merge.

“This notion that the government should get involved in every single little bank deal I think is just wrong,” Dimon said, adding that it’s “unfair” and the heads of those firms would say they’re “basically ceding ground to JPMorgan.”

Dimon, 68, said the Federal Reserve was right to cut its benchmark interest rate 50 basis points last month, but again warned that inflationary forces remain. He has been cautious on the economy for more than a year, arguing that inflation could be stickier than investors anticipate. After the Fed cut rates in September for the first time in more than four years Dimon said he wouldn’t “count my eggs” on a soft landing. 

The CEO has said repeatedly, including on Tuesday, that geopolitics are his biggest concern. He said last month that that issue “dwarfs any one I’ve had since I’ve been working.” Beyond that, he also cited the US deficit, saying that by its nature it’s inflationary. “And at one point we’ve got to deal with this.”