JPMorgan's Co-Head Of Investment Banking Leaves To Private Equity Firm

Yet another senior JPMorgan executive — and once a potential successor to Jamie Dimon — departs.

Michael Cavanagh, JPMorgan's former co-head of investment banking.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

The co-head of JPMorgan Chase's investment bank and one of CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon's longtime allies is leaving the bank for The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. Michael Cavanagh, who came over to the bank with Jamie Dimon from Bank One in 2004, is the latest senior JPMorgan executive to leave the bank. Cavanagh was also seen by many as a possible to successor to Dimon as CEO.

The 48-year-old Cavanagh had long been something of cleanup man for the bank, often in the most sensitive roles when it was rocked by crisis. He was chief financial officer when JPMorgan navigated the financial crisis and was one of the megabank's least affected by the turmoil that crippled several rivals.

When it came time to examine what happened with the "London Whale," the bank's more than $6 billion derivatives trading loss in 2012, it was again Cavanagh who took up the task and was elevated to co-head of the investment bank along with Daniel Pinto in summer 2012.

Cavanagh was one of the last remaining of the core group of JPMorgan executives who saw the bank through the financial crisis, besides Dimon of course, to still be at the bank. Of the 15 executives on the bank's operating committee Fortune labeled "The Survivors" in a 2008 cover story, only four still remain at the company.

Cavanagh's predecessor at the head of the investment bank, James Staley, left JPMorgan early last year for BlueMountain Capital, a hedge fund founded by a former JPMorgan trader and one of the firms on the other side of the London Whale trade. Charles Scharf, who headed JPMorgan's retail banking operations, left in late 2012 to become CEO of Visa.

"I have worked with Mike Cavanagh for more than 20 years," said Dimon in a statement. "He's a highly talented executive and has been an integral part of our management team."

Cavanagh will become co-president and co-chief operating officer of The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity firms. "I have worked at JPMorgan Chase for almost my entire professional life, and it was not without a lot of soul searching that I decided it was time for me to take my career in a different direction," Cavanagh said in a statement. "I wish all of my friends and colleagues at JPMorgan Chase the very best."

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