JPMorgan Chase on Thursday promoted two of its top executives into newly created co-president roles, marking the latest step in CEO Jamie Dimon’s long-running succession planning while announcing the retirement of one of Dimon’s most prominent potential successors.

Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, who have jointly led the bank’s commercial and investment banking division since early 2024, were named co-presidents of JPMorgan effective immediately, according to a regulatory filing.

As part of the changes, Petno becomes the sole CEO of the commercial and investment banking division, while Rohrbaugh will take over as CEO of the firm’s consumer and community banking division, replacing Marianne Lake.

“The decision to elevate Doug and Troy to Co-Presidents and heads of the company’s two largest businesses reflects the Board’s confidence in their extraordinary leadership capabilities, business performance, relationships, experience and commitment to always doing the right thing,” Dimon said in a statement.

Lake, a 25-year veteran of JPMorgan who has been on the short list of potential Dimon successors since serving as CFO starting in 2013, decided to retire from the firm, according to the filing.

The moves reshape the leadership team beneath Dimon, 70, who has repeatedly said the bank’s board has multiple executives capable of eventually becoming CEO. By placing Petno and Rohrbaugh in charge of the firm’s two biggest and most important operating businesses while also elevating them to co-presidents, JPMorgan gives both executives broader management experience at a crucial time.

That would appear to make one of the two men the most obvious possible successor to Dimon, whose eventual departure has been among the most closely watched questions on Wall Street.

While Petno takes over sole control of the key Wall Street and commercial banking group that he has co-led for a few years, Rohrbaugh will now learn consumer banking after a career in institutional trading and markets businesses, a key step to expanding his resume.

Dimon said that Lake, who took over as sole head of the consumer banking division in 2024, was “an outstanding partner and friend and has dedicated her career to championing our people and customers, building world-class businesses and delivering results, always with unquestioned integrity.”

That is significantly more than the $20 million awards given to asset and wealth management CEO Mary Erdoes, another possible Dimon successor, and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Piepszak. Last year, Piepszak signaled that she wanted to be excluded from the succession shortlist.

The awards are separate from the executives’ annual pay and vest only after three years…

Google is on pace for its worst day on the stock market in a year, as artificial intelligence concerns have mounted and two high-profile researchers departed for rivals in recent days.

Shares of parent company Alphabet slid 7% on Monday morning, underperforming both the Nasdaq and the rest of their megacap peers.

The brain drain concerns began last week when Google’s vice president of engineering and a co-lead of its Gemini AI models, Noam Shazeer, announced Wednesday that he was leaving the company to join rival OpenAI. Shazeer’s departure came less than two years after he returned to Google.

In August 2024, Google brought back Shazeer and fellow researcher Daniel De Freitas to its DeepMind AI unit as part of a partnership with startup Character.AI, which the pair founded after leaving Google in 2021. 

The departure came weeks after Google unveiled new AI products, including its Gemini 3.5 Flash model and Gemini Spark AI agent, at its annual I/O developer conference.

Another exit came on Friday, when John Jumper, DeepMind vice president and engineering fellow, announced he was leaving the company after nine years for rival Anthropic.

Jumper, who won a Nobel Prize alongside Google’s Demis Hassabis in 2024, is best known as the co-creator of AlphaFold, a breakthrough AI that has predicted more than 200 million protein structures, cutting years off biological and medical research.

The share slide also came on the heels of a Sunday Wall Street Journal interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who called for less dependence on “AI Giants” and said the AI market was commoditized. 

Alphabet has been spending heavily on AI, including raising $141 billion in debt and equity since October. The company has been trying to prove that its vertically integrated AI stack can generate returns.

If models become cheaper and more interchangeable, as noted in Nadella’s interview, investors may question whether that spending is building a durable advantage or simply adding pressure to margins.

Google users on Monday also reported outages on Gmail and YouTube.

BP is on its third CEO and third chairman in under three years, prompting investor scrutiny of the structure and oversight of its board as the oil major works to turn itself around and adapt to the supply shock.

Weeks after CEO Meg O’Neill started in April, the chairman, Albert Manifold, was suddenly dismissed in late May. The board said this was due to “serious concerns” relating to governance standards, oversight and conduct.

Manifold said he had been fired “without warning and without explanation,” adding he disputes “entirely the characterisation” of his conduct.

One of the oil supermajor’s top active investors told CNBC that some may be in danger of missing the bigger picture, while an activist shareholder said the company urgently needed to address the reasons for the turnover.

Berkshire Hathaway shares slipped Friday as investors digested the formal end of Warren Buffett’s six-decade tenure as chief executive and the start of a new era under successor Greg Abel.

Class A shares fell 1.7% in afternoon trading on Abel’s first day as CEO, following Buffett’s official handoff of the role and the close of one of the most storied leadership tenures in corporate history.

The Omaha-based conglomerate ended 2025 with a gain of 10.9%, trailing the S&P 500’s 16.4% advance but marking its 10th consecutive year of positive returns. Buffett, 95, remains chairman and has sought to reassure shareholders that Berkshire’s future extends well beyond his tenure.

“It has a better chance, I think, of being here 100 years from now than any company I can think of,” Buffett said in a special interview with CNBC.

Abel takes over as Berkshire sits on a record $381.6 billion in cash as of the end of September, following an extended period of net equity selling. Buffett has said Abel will have final authority over capital allocation decisions.

“Greg will be the decider,” Buffett said. I “can’t imagine how much more he can get accomplished in a week than I can in a month….I’d rather have Greg handling my money than any of the top investment advisors or any of the top CEOs in the United States.”

Berkshire shares lagged the broader market after Buffett announced his retirement in May, as some investors weighed whether Abel could oversee the conglomerate’s vast operating businesses and equity portfolio with the same touch, while still justifying a premium valuation.

Buffett departs with an unmatched record. After taking control of Berkshire in the mid-1960s, he turned a struggling textile maker into a compounding powerhouse. From 1964 through 2024, Berkshire delivered a compounded annual gain of 19.9%, nearly double the S&P 500’s 10.4%, resulting in an overall return of more than 5.5 million percent.

Jared Kushner’s firm Affinity Partners has dropped out of Paramount Skydance‘s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

“With ​two ​strong competitors ​vying to secure ​the future ​of this ​unique American ​asset, ​Affinity ​has ​decided no longer to pursue ​the opportunity,” an Affinity spokesperson said in a statement.

“The dynamics ​of the investment have changed significantly ​since we initially became ​involved ​in October,” the spokesperson said. “We ​continue to ​believe ​there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount’s offer.”

Kushner is the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

Affinity’s role in Paramount’s hostile bid came to light on Dec. 8, when Paramount announced an all-cash, $30 per share offer for all of WBC.

The offer came days after streaming giant Netflix said it had reached a deal to buy WBD’s film studio and streaming service HBO Max. Warner Bros. plans to spin out Discovery Global, which includes a large portfolio of pay TV networks, including CNN and TNT.

Trump last week said Netflix’s proposed deal, which requires regulatory approval, “could be a problem” because of how much market share Netflix would end up with.

Trump said he will be involved in the process of approving the deal.

The monetary value of Affinity’s role in Paramount’s bid was not disclosed in a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Paramount.

However, that SEC filing said that in addition to commitments from Affinity and RedBird Capital Partners, there was a $1 billion commitment from Tencent, and an “aggregate $24 billion commitment from three sovereign wealth funds from” the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.

CNBC has asked Affinity about the status of the Gulf states’ commitment in light of Affinity’s withdrawal from the bid.

HONG KONG — The boom in initial public offerings in Hong Kong has offered a long-awaited release valve for private equity firms sitting on aging China portfolios, top fund executives said at an industry panel Tuesday.

After years of muted dealmaking and frozen exits, the opportunity to list in Hong Kong at attractive valuations has lifted sentiment, with companies raising $18.2 billion via IPOs this year as of October, putting the financial hub on track to become the world’s largest listing destination this year.

The rebound in Hong Kong-listed stocks — the Hang Seng Index is up more than 28% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 with less than 13% gains — has further buoyed confidence.

Global private equity firms are cautiously turning bullish on China after spending the past few years on the sidelines. Cheaper valuations and hopes that domestic consumer confidence could start recovering are drawing investors back to the world’s second-largest economy.

“In consumer-investing in China, you effectively have an opportunity to buy growth at a discount,” said Scott Chen, managing partner at global private equity firm L Catterton, citing the rapid rise of domestic brands and massive household savings.

“The worst is behind us and consumer confidence is starting to turn,” Chen added, expecting consumers will increasingly favor homegrown brands.

Echoing that sentiment, Nikhil Srivastava, partner and co-head of private equity at alternative investment firm PAG, said that Chinese assets have become more attractive as many global players have pulled back, reducing competition.

“What that means is that you can buy market-leading assets very cheap. These are high-quality, domestic consumption-driven assets that you can buy at pretty attractive multiples,” Srivastava added.

The shift in positioning follows years in which global allocators harbored an “anything but China” mindset, according to Tim Huang, partner at U.S.-based Lexington Partners. “The investment sentiment really swung from one way to the other [when] the truth lies somewhere in the middle.”

The opportunity in China remains compelling for investors with discipline and long-term commitment, Huang added.

Still, the surge in IPO activity in Hong Kong is particularly significant for China-focused PE fund managers that have struggled to exit investments since 2021 as they search for better…