“Lo and behold, here we are,” she says, “and our clients continue to give us assets.”
Erdoes broadened the bank’s alternative investment portfolio and international reach in 2010, when JPMorgan acquired a majority stake in Brazilian hedge-fund firm Gavea Investimentos Ltd., founded by former Central Bank of Brazil head Arminio Fraga.
With assets in almost all of her fiefdoms growing, Erdoes has been on a hiring binge. Asset management took on 1,366 new employees in the 12 months through June -- an 8 percent increase -- even while JPMorgan Chase announced plans to cut 19,000 people in the consumer bank through 2014.
Many of the hires in asset management are outside the U.S. The division has received record amounts of new money from Japan during the past year, Erdoes says, plus a surge in private-bank deposits from Hong Kong and Taiwan and strong institutional and mutual fund flows from Italy and Spain.
More Global
“Clients are becoming more global; they’re realizing that markets are more interconnected,” Erdoes says. “It’s no longer the local regional clients buying the local regional flavors. It’s everybody asking for everything.”
Erdoes mixes often with those clients, says E. John Rosenwald, the 83-year-old vice chairman of the private bank and former vice chairman of Bear Stearns Cos., which JPMorgan took over in 2008. She has a second office at the private bank so she can meet important customers, he says.
“She’ll always make herself available for a lunch or a drop-in,” he says. “She leads by example. There is nothing she asks anyone to do that she won’t do herself.”