(Reuters) – Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said Jamie Dimon should run for president in the next U.S. elections after the JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO expressed his interest in pursuing a public office.
“I love my country, and maybe one day I’ll serve my country in one capacity or another,” Dimon said in an interview with Bloomberg TV earlier on Wednesday, when asked if he would ever consider public office.
Ackman called Dimon an “exemplary leader” and lauded him for having “superbly managed” JPMorgan through every crisis.
“Our country is at risk with $32T (trillion) of debt with no end to massive deficits in sight, heading into a recession at a time of great political uncertainty,” Ackman said in a tweet on Wednesday.
“… Clearly he is thinking about running. I can’t imagine a better time for him to do so,” Ackman said.
There have been speculations about Dimon’s potential presidential run in the future. At a conference in 2018, he reportedly quipped about hypothetically campaigning against then-president Donald Trump.
“I think I could beat Trump … because I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is,” he said, according to a report.
Dimon later walked back on those comments, saying that the remark proved he would not make a good politician.
“If he decides to get out of banking, I think he would be really good in politics,” former President Bill Clinton once said of Dimon.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dimon is currently on his first visit to China since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)