Austin Adams, chief information officer of JPMorgan Chase, is to retire from the bank in October, according to an internal memo circulated by president and COO Jamie Dimon.
Adams' departure from JPMorgan Chase brings to an end a 34-year career in the banking business. The 62-year old technology chief will move to North Carolina to spend more time with his family, according to the memo.
At JPMorgan Chase Adams oversaw a $7 billion technology budget and 19,000 IT staff globally. He had earned a reputation as an expert in infrastructure planning in large bank mergers having been involved in over 90 mergers during the course of his career. He took over the reins at JPMOrgan Chase following the merger with Bank One, where he had been CIO since 2001. Prior to that he had been chief information officer at First Union Corporation, whcich subsequently merged with Wachovia.
One of his first decisions when he took over at JPMorgan Chase was to pull the plug on a seven-year $5 billion contract with IBM. AT the time, he explained: "We believe managing our own technology infrastructure is best for the long-term growth and success of our company as well as our shareholders."
Since then he has worked flat out to complete the integration of Bank One and JPMorgan Chase, culminating in an ongoing project to create a comprehensive risk aggregation identification system across the entire firm. It is expected that he will continue to advise on technology planning for the recent Bank of New York branch acquisition while Dimon puts the finishing touches to an internal tech re-org plan.