JPMorgan Chase to celebrate commercial lending team's move uptown

JPMorgan Chase will be rolling out the red carpet uptown next week to tout its growing commercial lending team in Charlotte and celebrate its move into the Hearst Tower -- right in Bank of America's backyard.

The open house Wednesday will be at the Foundation for the Carolinas building , just a few steps from Bank of America's headquarters. Gov. Pat McCrory and state commerce secretary Sharon Decker are scheduled to be in attendance, along with a number of local business executives.


They’ll be celebrating the move a day after JPMorgan Chase’s annual meeting. The bank has been under pressure to split its CEO and board chairman role, both now held by Jamie Dimon. Dimon himself has been under fire since the bank disclosed a $6 billion trading loss attributed to the so-called “London Whale.”

The New York bank has built its commercial lending team in Charlotte, which lends to businesses with more than $20 million in annual sale, significantly over the past two years. In August, JPMorgan Chase expanded the group from three members to eight. Two of them came from Bank of America, the rest from other parts of the bank.

Since then, Chase has added to the team and now has 15 bankers in the Charlotte group, a spokeswoman said. It's now moving into space in the 46-story Hearst Tower on Tryon Street.

The bank's Charlotte activities will continue Thursday, when JPMorgan is sponsoring a panel discussion on Charlotte's place in the global economy hosted by the Charlotte Business Journal at the Ritz-Carlton uptown.

Former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, who's now a senior adviser at JPMorgan, is scheduled to give the keynote speech.