Goodbye to Marianne Lake, the most interesting person at JPMorgan

Marianne Lake is leaving JPMorgan. A regulatory filing from yesterday confirmed the news, with the note that she would continue to work with Troy Rohrbaugh, the bank's head of consumer and community banking (CCB), to ensure a smooth transition “over the coming weeks”. 

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Lake spent 25 years at JPMorgan and had her hat in the ring for a long time to succeed JPMorgan’s long-serving CEO, Jamie Dimon. Alas, it appears that will never come to pass – much like the firm’s COO, Jennifer Piepszak, who took herself out of the running before being elevated as Dimon’s right-hand man last year.

So, who is left in the running? Rohrbaugh himself is one candidate. Mary Callahan Erdoes, the firm’s head of asset and wealth management, is another. Doug Petno, the CEO of JPM’s investment bank who was named co-President of the firm alongside Rohrbaugh yesterday, is yet another.

But that’s a speculation for another day. Lake is gone, and it’s not entirely clear where, or if she intends to stay in finance at all. Her CV likely doesn’t need to be sent to any recruiters – any bank in the world would fight to have her in their camp. Maybe she wants to be a movie star instead.

But who is Marianne Lake exactly? During her 26 years at JPMorgan she has held a number of roles, including group CFO and CEO of consumer lending. Most recently, she was CEO of the CCB. 

She's very British – and down to earth.

Born in Cumberland, Maryland, to a British electronic engineer father and an American mother, Lake was brought up in the UK – specifically, Southampton, and educated at the (very much non-target) Reading University, where she received a degree in physics.

She joined JPMorgan in London initially, after a stint at Big Four firm PwC, for whom she was a chartered accountant. She bought her first property in London, a 2.5-bedroom flat, at a then-typical 100% loan-to-value ratio. "I tightened belts, I didn't go out. I painted every single room a different colour,” Lake told Ryan Serhant of Big Money Energy. Lake joined JPMorgan in 2000 and moved to the USA for the bank in 2004.

Lake has at least one older sister, who is frequently in a state of surprise at her meteoric rise to the top of global banking. “It still surprises me, it still surprises my sister,” Lake told the FT in 2018. "Who? You? My little sister? How did that happen?” the sister asked Lake after she placed third in American Banker’s ranking of women in the industry.

Lake has a very British relationship to liquor, too. "Last year, I was number three on the list and being number 3 is a pretty good spot – you’ve placed, you get a medal, and you get to sit down and drink through the speeches,” she said at the American Banker banquet.

Lake speaks very quickly, wittily, and sometimes confusingly 

Lake apparently talks very fast, but only because she thinks very fast. She has an amazing memory for numbers and apparently competes with Dimon to see who can best remember numbers down to the greatest number of decimal points.

The finance industry has made mistakes, said Lake in speech at the American Banker awards: "We've acknowledged them, we've apologized for them, and we've certainly paid for them."

But her way of speaking isn’t assisted by her very distinctly British accent. The Times said in 2024 that a combination of those factors had led to colleagues struggling to keep up with what she was saying.

She's a single mother with three children born through a surrogate

Lake decided to have children aged 42, without a partner, and she used a surrogate. She is happy to broadcast the fact: Reuters reported that she tells her story to inspire other women at JPMorgan. One junior described her as "fearless."

In an interview with Marie Claire, Lake said: "I never worried about raising a kid on my own. I'm 42, not 20 with my eyes closed. The circumstances aren't traditional, but I didn't hesitate to do it." 

She told the American Banker banquet: “Working is important to my children, not just because it allows me to financially support them, but because I want them to see their mum as someone who is intellectually curious, who works really hard, who loves what she does, and therefore is a better mother because of it.”

She really wanted to be a movie star

The only clue we have for Lake’s next career move is this. "I was recently asked if I dreamed of being a CFO when I was little," Lake said. "My reaction was to say God no, I wanted to be a movie star and I still do. I still do. This may be my breakthrough moment, you never know."

She's a genuine supporter of other women 

"Cheers to all the exceptional ladies out there," said Lake. "You ladies totally rock."

Much like Jane Fraser, the CEO of Citi (who has an aristocratic Scottish background), Lake says senior female bankers can have children and a career, but not necessarily simultaneously. "You can have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time," said Lake at the American Banker banquet. She added that you need a great team, that you can't beat yourself up when you have to make difficult choices about work and family and that mothers should, "Always remember that your good enough is actually exceptional."

Most of all, Lake said working women shouldn't beat themselves up about not being there for their children: "I really do believe that me working is important to my children – not just because it allows me to support them, but as someone who is intellectually curious, works very hard, and who loves what she does and is a better mother because of it. And I do love what I do."

She’s quite possibly a Republican

Jamie Dimon is very famously a Democrat. He donated consistently to Democrat candidates from 1989 to 2009; although he considered himself “barely a Democrat” in 2012, he told CNBC in 2019 that he no longer felt that way. “My heart is Democratic but my brain is kind of Republican,” he said.

Lake, however, seems to have different political opinions. According to public disclosures, Lake has contributed to four political causes: mostly via a JPMorgan political action committee (PAC), but also to three individual politicians: two Republicans and a Democrat.

The Democrat, Jon Tester, is a noted bipartisan who was endorsed by the Friends of Traditional Banking, a PAC which had previously only endorsed Republicans. Tester also revolted against his party to vote for the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which partly dismantled the contentious (to Wall Street) Dodd-Frank act.

The two Republicans are also interesting. One of them – Rob Portman – is a pretty moderate Republican. The other, however, is Richard Shelby. Shelby was a senator for Alabama, and rather less moderate: he voted against the 2009 bank bail-out, opposed abortion, and called the US healthcare system “the best in the world”.

She’s bullish on AI

Much like Dimon, Lake is confident on AI’s potential capabilities. At the firm’s investor day in May this year, she said that the bank would be able to reduce operations and account services headcount by 10% as a result of AI-related efficiency improvements over the next five years. She expected business to grow by 25% in the same period.

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