Jennifer Nason started her 36-year career at JPMorgan in New York on the day of the 1987 market crash, so she knows a thing or two about financial collapses.
private dining room, you can see hundreds of Manhattan buildings, all reaching above each other like competing bidders on an old-fashioned trading floor.
The most senior Australian woman on Wall Street points out the window down to Madison Avenue, where JPMorgan is building its new headquarters. It will be the tallest tower in Manhattan on completion and a symbol of the bank’s success as the largest in the world by market capitalisation. The changed plan gives us more time, and we’ll need it for her story, which spans everything from tech wrecks and asset bubbles to fashion and female workplace empowerment; from China and Pine Gap to riding a motorcycle along the Champs-Élysées.The waiter takes our orders and Nason opts not to have wine. She has never been much of a drinker, she says, even in the early days, when she joined the young crowd of international employees living the life in a JPMorgan-owned apartment tower.
“Six months before the fraud was detected and the company went under, we had underwritten $US11 billion of debt for them,” Nason says. “It was the largest bond deal in history at the time. And guess who’s responsible for due diligence? Me! That’s my job as the lead banker. “I have zero tolerance for unnecessary risk-taking, big egos or BS in my colleagues or my clients,” Nason says.Our grilled romaine salads have turned up magically fast, sprinkled with feta, squash and chilli. The ratio of romaine lettuce to the other ingredients is excessive, and we go quiet for a bit, munching these American-style salads.
“I’ve had senior colleagues or clients, male and female, comment on the lipstick I’m wearing or the earrings I have on. But I don’t think of myself as very fashion conscious; I am either dressed up or in sweatpants.” Nason, centre, with author and academic Mary Kalantzis at the Australian Ambassador’s residence in Washington in 2008.As she sits very still and focused, Nason says how much she loves her jobs. They include heading up the business council of the American Australian Association, which convinced Donald Trump to exclude Australia from steel tariffs. For the level of success she has enjoyed, it is extraordinary how little media attention she has captured over the years.
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