JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Wednesday said that he and tech billionaire Elon Musk have smoothed over their previously contentious relationship.
“Elon and I hugged it out,” Dimon told CNBC in a TV interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland. “He came to one of our conferences, [and] he and I had a nice, long chat. We settled some of our differences.”
Dimon praised Musk’s various companies, including Tesla, space exploration firm SpaceX and Neuralink — a startup seeking to develop brain-computer interface systems.
“The guy is our Einstein,” the JPMorgan chief said. “I’d like to be helpful to him and his companies as much as we can.”
Dimon’s remarks come after the U.S. banking giant late last year agreed to drop a lawsuit filed against Tesla in 2021, seeking $162.2 million plus fees in a dispute over stock warrant transactions. Previously, JPMorgan had alleged Tesla had breached the terms of a contract that the companies signed pertaining to re-pricing the warrants.
Tesla was supposed to deliver shares or cash if its share price went above a contractually agreed “strike price” by a certain expiration date.
Conflict arose when JP Morgan made adjustments to the value of the warrants after Musk tweeted in August 2018 that he was considering taking Tesla private for $420 a share, and again a few weeks later when the Tesla boss went back on the idea of privatizing the electric car manufacturer.
Musk was later charged with securities fraud by the SEC. Tesla and Musk agreed to pay $20 million each to settle the suit.
Musk is now playing a key role in newly inaugurated President Donald Trump’s government as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Dimon said he wants to “be helpful to them.”
“Government needs to be more accountable, it needs to be more efficient. It should be outcomes-based. I mean, I’d say department by department. So I wish them the best,” Dimon said. “It’s going to be complicated. The federal government’s complicated.”
