By Andy Serwer

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon doesn't usually make high-profile outside hires for his senior executive team, preferring instead the homegrown variety. That makes Todd Combs, formerly a top investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway and brought in to head up JPMorgan Chase's new $10 billion Strategic Investment Group, an exception.

Except that Combs is hardly a bolt from the blue, having served on JPMorgan's board since 2016.

"I know the company well," Combs tells Barron's in his first interview as a bank employee. "I know everybody from Jamie to the operating committee and the next layer [of management]. I'm well aware of the balance sheet, the excess capital, and how Jamie and the team think and operate."

Like the bank's other top executives, Combs, who had also been CEO of Berkshire's Geico insurance unit, is still settling into his new office on the 47th floor of JPMorgan's new Manhattan headquarters. "I hope you don't mind the warm office," says Combs, a tennis-playing Florida native. "I don't like the cold."

Combs has mapped out his new gig, which began in January, on a two-column chart he's sketched on a notepad. On the left are five rows of industries, such as defense and supply chain/reindustrialization, and on the right are their future manifestations, such as defense tech and U.S. semiconductors, respectively. The plan is to invest in "everything our country has outsourced and abdicated over recent decades," Combs says. "We want to invest in places where the puck is going so that America can control its own future."

That means deploying the group's $10 billion into middle-market and large companies in U.S. defense, aerospace, healthcare, and energy sectors to help them grow. Recent investments include mining company Perpetua Resources and defense tech start-up Shield AI. Combs, who reports to Dimon, will also act as a special adviser to the CEO.

Combs' endeavor is a part of the Security and Resiliency Initiative JPMorgan announced in October, in which the bank will commit to facilitating $1.5 trillion in investments for companies deemed "critical to national economic security and resiliency." He joins the initiative's external advisory council, chaired by Dimon, which includes Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State.

Combs says investments come to him directly "or through Jamie or other senior bankers." What about from the Trump administration? "There are times that they'll reach out and look for our help."

"We want to be a good partner to the government regardless of who's in charge," Combs says. "It's the GOP now. It can be someone else in the future. We're trying to let capitalism send the right signal. We look at every opportunity on its own merit. We want an impact and a return."

Highly regarded as an investor, Combs, a boyish-looking 55, helped return Geico, which was burdened with outdated technology and bloated costs, to profitability. Berkshire watchers thought he might play a role in the company's post-Warren Buffett era, either overseeing its multibillion-dollar investment portfolio or its massive insurance operations. Or he could have been up for other high-profile jobs.

Why this one?

"It's a unique opportunity, both with Jamie and the institution, and the mission of the job," Combs says. "This is critical to the future of the country. You want to find things in life that are big and important, that are worth doing and doable."

Combs has an "anti-bucket list" for his new role. "I had about 10 or 12 things that I didn't want," he says. "Jamie and I would talk every day after he brought this role for me. I didn't want to be measured on VAR," which stands for "value at risk," a statistical measure that quantifies financial risk. "I didn't want to get bogged down in bureaucracy. None of that occurred. In fact, it's better than I could have imagined. I'm sure there will be rough spots. That will happen when I make a bad investment, which is invariably gonna happen."

Was jumping from board member to management awkward? "No," he says. "I'd like to think that there's an implicit trust factor because of that decade of relationships. I don't need years of random interaction getting up to speed." He talks about riding the subway with Lori Beer, the bank's global chief information officer, "back to our respective residences the other night and talking about our tech road map for a specific vendor." Or being pitched on a $500 million deal and walking it down the hall to Troy Rohrbaugh and Doug Petno, co-CEOs of JPMorgan's Commercial & Investment Bank.

As for Combs' role as a strategic advisor to Dimon, "that's about looking at the bank's operation from an outside perspective," Combs says. "It's kind of an investor mind-set -- you see failure everywhere all of the time, whereas maybe inside a firm you can have an insular view."

Combs declined to talk much about his time at Berkshire, which he left in December, or his take on what the future might hold for the company. "I was back and forth from Omaha to D.C. for six years running Geico. That was a long time. I'm very proud -- not to go down that rabbit hole -- of what we accomplished at Geico. Berkshire is an animal unto itself that's completely unique."

A person familiar with the matter says that Combs isn't a candidate to succeed Dimon, especially after he had his fill of the CEO role running Geico and wants to focus on his passion, which is investing.

It had better be. At a recent company update, speaking of Combs' mandate, Dimon told analysts, "We said $10 billion of investment, we could do $20 billion." That didn't escape Combs' attention.

"My job just doubled," he says with a grin.

-- Rebecca Ungarino contributed to this article.

Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com

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March 27, 2026 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT)

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