Todd Combs, the former Berkshire Hathaway stockpicker who worked alongside Warren Buffett for more than a decade, has helped direct roughly $5 billion in investments since joining JPMorgan Chase earlier this year, offering an early look at how he is shaping spending at the country’s largest bank.
At JPMorgan, Combs has taken on a broad mandate that includes leading the bank’s strategic investment group while also advising chief executive Jamie Dimon and several of his top lieutenants, a position that places him close to the center of how the bank allocates capital beyond its core lending and trading operations.
The strategic investment group Combs now leads sits within JPMorgan’s so-called Security and Resiliency Initiative, a broader push that includes plans to deploy roughly $1.5 trillion over the next decade to support industries the bank has identified as critical to US economic and national security interests.
Before arriving at JPMorgan, Combs spent years as one of two stockpickers managing a significant portion of Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio alongside Buffett, and separately served as chief executive of Geico, the insurance business Berkshire owns outright.
The $5 billion figure represents an early marker of Combs' influence at JPMorgan, and offers a signal of how the bank intends to use his investing background as it works to scale up the broader strategic investment push tied to its resiliency initiative.
