Jamie Dimon elevated two new CEO candidates as a third leaves the bank. Is the clock actually ticking this time?

For those trying to read the tea leaves in JPMorgan’s latest executive reshuffle, which will see Marianne Lake exit and two executives, Troy Rohrbaugh and Doug Petno, promoted to co-presidents, don’t stare too hard. Lake, most recently the CEO of JPMorgan’s consumer bank, is at least the eighth JPMorgan executive since 2013 to be promoted into a CEO-succession seat only to leave as Dimon continues his 20-year run atop America’s biggest and best-run bank.

Dimon has occasionally sharpened his rolling five-year time frame for retirement but not advanced it. Last year, the bank elevated Jennifer Piepszak to COO, making her Dimon’s obvious successor — for about 15 minutes, before a bank spokesman clarified that Piepszak “does not want to be considered for the CEO position at this time.” The recent unveiling of JPMorgan’s new headquarters, a $3 billion monument to capitalism in midtown Manhattan that might have served as a send-off for Dimon, came and went. Dimon will soon pass another retirement signpost: a retention bonus of 1.5 million shares he received in 2021, which required him to remain CEO for five years, vests next month.

And if it really is down to Petno and Rohrbaugh, any bake-off will likely take a while: It took Ted Pick two-and-a-half years to win a three-way succession race at Morgan Stanley, and David Solomon 18 months in the two-man bid to replace Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs.