JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon addressed inequality, racism and corporate responsibility in his annual letter to shareholders on Wednesday morning.
Hours later, the JPMorgan board, of which he is chairman, called on shareholders to vote against a proposal for a race equity audit.
JPMorgan Chase JPM,
is one of a handful of the largest banks in the country being asked to conduct audit audits to examine how their practices and policies affect non-white customers and color communities following the Black Lives Matter protests last year.
Dimon in particular went further than other CEOs by going into a Chase branch in New York last year and taking a knee to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. In addition, Dimon spoke about the importance of careful planning, analysis and reporting on the economic and racial crises facing the United States in a letter to shareholders announced Wednesday morning.
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He also mentioned the importance of transparency: “Unlike many businesses that will only sell you a product if you can pay for it, banks must necessarily reject customers or apply rules that a customer does not like (e.g. ). This makes open and transparent operations even more important. ”
However, when the bank announced its proxy on Wednesday afternoon, JPMorgan insisted on a ‘no’ vote on a shareholders’ decision that would ensure transparency on racial equity, saying it was already addressing the issues. In defense, the company has pledged $ 30 billion over five years to ‘close the gap between racial prosperity, support employees and break down barriers to systemic racism’, saying it has’ extensive stakeholder involvement through our activities are affected ‘, as well as a system for diversifying the workforce.
In its shareholder proposal, CtW Investment Group pointed to JPMorgan’s ‘conflicting history’ in dealing with racial injustice. The group mentioned, among other things, the bank’s $ 55 million federal lawsuit related to mortgage discrimination; the closure of its branches in majority-black communities; and discrimination lawsuits against black and Hispanic employees.
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JPMorgan joins Citigroup Inc. C,
WFC, Wells Fargo & Co.,
Bank of America Corp. BAC,
and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS,
by asking shareholders to reject the racial equity audits. Morgan Stanley MS,
which had a similar proposal recently reached an agreement with CtW. According to CtW, which agreed to withdraw its proposal, Morgan Stanley promised to conduct an internal review of its staff and leadership, and to further discuss the practices affecting equity for other non-white stakeholders before next year. ‘s annual meeting.
A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment Wednesday night.