JPMorgan Chase & Co. hired Berkshire Hathaway’s Todd Combs for a broad role that includes advising chief executive officer Jamie Dimon and his top lieutenants on strategic issues.
Combs, one of just two investment managers under Berkshire’s Warren Buffett, will also oversee JPMorgan’s commitment to plow $US10 billion ($15.1 billion) into companies that will bolster US economic security through direct equity investments, according to a statement Monday. As part of the changes, the company created a new council to help with that work, which includes Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley.
Todd Combs is on his way to JPMorgan.Credit: Bloomberg
A former hedge fund manager, 54-year-old Combs already has deep ties with the bank. He joined the JPMorgan’s board in 2016 after he’d impressed Dimon so much when the banker visited Omaha. He was also instrumental in the health-care venture that JPMorgan, Amazon and Berkshire started in 2018, though that project was ultimately shut down three years later.
“JPMorgan, as usually is the case, has made a good decision,” Buffett said about the Combs hire in a separate statement.
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Combs’ departure from Berkshire will leave the $US1 trillion conglomerate short an investment manager just as Buffett prepares to hand the chief executive officer title to Greg Abel. Combs helped oversee parts of the company’s $US283 billion equity portfolio alongside Buffett and Ted Weschler in addition to being the chief executive officer of the insurer Geico.
Investing veteran
At JPMorgan, Combs is being tapped to oversee part of a new venture announced in October that the bank has called its Security and Resiliency Initiative. The biggest US bank has said it would pour $US1.5 trillion into industries crucial to national economic security over the next 10 years — a 50% increase from what it would have provided anyway.
Alongside that financing commitment, the strategic investment group, which Combs will lead, will see the bank invest as much as $US10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing in key sectors like critical minerals.
