In the face of an increasingly complex geopolitical climate, JPMorgan Chase wants to help clients tread carefully.
The bank launched the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics on Wednesday, a client advisory service leveraging its network, expertise and resources to help clients navigate global business.
“In today’s world, business leaders must navigate rising global competition coupled with unprecedented interconnectedness, disruptive technological forces, persistent economic uncertainty and proliferating geopolitical crises,” said JPMorganChase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon in a prepared statement.
The advisory service “will help our clients meet this moment by providing strategic vision, tested experience, and data-driven analysis that will support them in addressing the opportunities and challenges of a changing global economy and a fast-changing world,” he said.
It’s an apropos offering from the bank run by Dimon, whose annual shareholder letter in April asserted that “we face the most perilous and complicated geopolitical and economic environment since World War II.”
Calling out the war in Ukraine, terrorism in the Middle East, potential fragmentation in Europe and trade disputes with China, he said it’s “extremely important to recognize that security and economics are interconnected – ‘economic’ warfare has caused military warfare in the past,” he said in the letter
The importance of geopolitical awareness and strategy is something Dimon’s stressed in annual shareholder letters before, including those published last year and the year before.
CfG aims to help clients anticipate and respond to geopolitical trends and events. That includes, JPMorgan said, the rise of artificial intelligence and challenges in U.S.-China relations which Dimon also mentioned in his most recent shareholder letter.
CfG will offer regular reports and events, both in-person and virtual, to clients.
“Working with clients every day, our team has a front row seat to how global economic uncertainty is forcing business leaders to evaluate their short- and long-term playbooks, assessing risks and seizing opportunities,” said Derek Chollet, a foreign policy adviser who will lead CfG. Chollet previously served as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, a counselor of the State Department, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs and in several other government advisory roles, according to his LinkedIn.
Under Chollet’s guidance, CfG will farm expertise from across the bank, its international council, and others externally, including 66th U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Tony Blair, and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, according to a press announcement.
CfG published its first series of reports this month, covering developments in the Middle East, global rearmament – including the potential development of nuclear power in Iran – and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
“This isn’t a news digest. It’s a lens … into the tectonic shifts reshaping our world,” Chollet wrote in his opening letter to readers. “Our mission is to go beyond headlines and help decision-makers anticipate what comes next: the moves, countermoves, and signal flares that define the geopolitical chessboard.”
