Jamie Dimon issues apology following comments on CCP 

CEO of JP Morgan Jamie Dimon has expressed his “regret” at remarks he made suggesting that his company would outlast the Chinese Communist Party, saying that he “should not have made the comments”.

Dimon made the comments at the Boston College Chief Executives Club, a business forum.

“I made a joke the other day that the Communist party is celebrating its 100th year,” said Dimon. “So is JP Morgan. I’ll make a bet that we last longer”.

“I can’t say that in China. They are probably listening anyway,” Dimon added.

Dimon said in a statement on Wednesday: “I regret and should not have made that comment. I was trying to emphasise the strength and longevity of our company.”

Perhaps the banker was embarrassed at coming across as two-faced as it had been less than a week since he made a brief visit to Hong Kong.

Dimon was the first Wall Street banking CEO to visit Chinese territory since the onset of the pandemic.

Of course leaders such as Dimon are dependent on China for a large portion of their revenues and are therefore cautious of getting in their bad books.

China has been known to come to hard on major western companies when it feels it is necessary.

A couple of years ago,, Swiss bank UBS was excluded from some Chinese state-backed deals after one of its economists made a perceived slur about “pigs in China”.

Dimon is not the first major American figure to backtrack on comments made about China following public pressure.

Lebron James caught a lot of flack over his handling of the fallout from the NBA’s relationship with China, while wrestler John Cena issued an apology to China after calling Taiwan a country.