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The meeting was held off a highway exit populated mostly by gas stations and the Florida state fairgrounds. One shareholder complained at the meeting that it took two hours to find the venue. The atmosphere in the meeting, which lasted about an hour and 45 minutes, was largely congenial. But Dimon, Raymond and general counsel Stephen Cutler, who shared the stage at the front of a first-floor meeting room, shut down some questioners and made them adhere to three-minute time limits. CLSA analyst Mike Mayo asked Raymond if shareholders could be assured that the board was doing its job of policing the CEO. "This is the first time that anybody has said to me that I'm not strong enough," replied Raymond, who is 74. Although JPMorgan has been turning in record earnings, it's also facing regulatory investigations and lawsuits, not only over the trading loss but also other practices including how it handles foreclosures. Father Seamus Finn, from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said Dimon brushed over questions on crucial issues like allegations about manipulating a key interest rate known as Libor. "We didn't get answers to any questions," Finn said after the meeting. "He always says,
'We have the deepest capital markets in the world.' I don't disagree with him. But Libor and the London whale happened with the deepest capital markets in the world." Several shareholders also asked why the shareholder groups that backed splitting the chairman and CEO roles stopped getting access to the vote counts as they came in, even though JPMorgan got frequent updates. The New York Times reported that the change followed a request from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street's main lobbying group. "All of a sudden we were shut down," said Michael Garland, from the New York City Comptroller's Office, which had supported splitting the roles. Cutler wouldn't comment about access to the vote count. Dimon, asked at the meeting by the AFSCME union group, which made the chairman/CEO proposal, wouldn't comment about how much the bank contributes to SIFMA.
Dimon called the trading loss "extremely embarrassing." He promised that the bank was overhauling priorities and fixing practices that regulators were concerned about. "I can't tell you we don't make mistakes, I can't tell you there's not a bad apple among them," he said. "But we try to fix our problems and move on." In the previous six annual meetings where Dimon has been both chairman and CEO, shareholders have been asked about separating the roles four times. Last year marked the highest level of votes in favor . In 2007 and 2008, only about 15 percent of shareholders voted for similar measures.
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