Goldman Sachs vs JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Marcus Goldman founded a small business in lower Manhattan, pioneering the trading of commercial paper—short-term promissory notes used by small businesses to secure working capital. Joined by his son-in-law Samuel Sachs in 1882, the partnership institutionalized corporate debt underwriting.

After operating as a private partnership owned by its managing directors for 130 years, Goldman Sachs executed its historic initial public offering IPO on the NYSE, raising $3.66 billion. The capital influx transformed the firm into a corporate juggernaut, aggressively scaling its fixed income, currency, and commodities (FICC) trading segments.

Amid the peak systemic contagion of the subprime mortgage meltdown, Goldman Sachs avoided insolvency by converting into a traditional bank holding company under Federal Reserve oversight. This structural pivot granted the elite investment bank emergency access to direct discount window liquidity support.

By mid-2026, Goldman Sachs successfully scaled back its costly retail consumer experiments to double down on its ultra-high-margin institutional roots. Under CEO David Solomon, the investment bank maintained its undisputed absolute dominance at the peak of global M&A advisory leagues.

One of JPMorgan Chase's oldest predecessor institutions was founded in 1799 by Aaron Burr — the U.S. Vice President who would later shoot and kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Burr obtained a charter for a water company to supply clean water to New York City, then inserted a clause allowing surplus capital to be used for "moneyed transactions." He had created a bank disguised as a utility. Hamilton, who had opposed the charter, was furious. He was shot five years later.

During the Panic of 1907, a stock market crash triggered a cascade of bank failures across the United States. J. Pierpont Morgan — then 70 years old — essentially acted as America's central bank, personally organising a coalition of bankers to inject liquidity into failing institutions. Morgan locked the country's leading bankers in his library and refused to let them leave until they agreed on a rescue plan. The episode directly led to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

When Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon agreed to acquire it for $2 per share — later revised to $10 — in a deal orchestrated over a single weekend with the Federal Reserve. The deal was considered a rescue of the financial system. Six months later, JPMorgan acquired Washington Mutual in the largest bank failure in U.S. history. JPMorgan emerged from the 2008 financial crisis stronger than it entered.

When First Republic Bank failed in May 2023 — the second largest bank failure in U.S. history — JPMorgan acquired its assets in an FDIC-facilitated deal, gaining approximately $50 billion in deposits and $173 billion in loans. It was Dimon's third major crisis acquisition. Regulators described him as the most important banker of his generation. Critics asked whether JPMorgan had become too systemically important to ever be allowed to fail — or to be effectively regulated.

Jamie Dimon, who had run JPMorgan since 2005, spent 2025 delivering increasingly pointed warnings about geopolitical risk, U.S. fiscal deficits, and the dangers of complacency in financial markets. His annual shareholder letters had become must-reads in global finance, combining specific financial analysis with broad warnings about the state of the world. Dimon, then 69, began publicly preparing the market for his eventual departure, though no timeline was announced. JPMorgan's market capitalisation exceeded $700 billion, making it the largest bank in U.S. history by that measure.