American multinational banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. will expand into Kenya and Ghana in the course of 2018.
Speaking to Bloomberg Television at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank has already hired a special team of bankers who will help coordinate and expand the Bank’s relationships in Kenya & Ghana.
Mr Dimon said, “You’ll see us open in countries we are not in, mostly in Africa. And so we wanna expand our services and when we go there, we want serve the country, we serve all the US multinationals going in, we serve the wealth funds, the universities.”
Mr Dimon said they bank would target Ghana and Kenya despite having failed to get licensing in the two countries in 2015 due to regulatory issues.
At the time, the bank said it would target large multinationals who are not well served by the local investment banking firms due to lack of expertise to handle large transactions.
JPMorgan, ranked as the largest bank in the United States and the world’s sixth largest bank by total assets, already has offices in South Africa and Nigeria.
According to Reuters, the JPMorgan recently unveiled a $20 billion investment plan which will see it hike wages, hire more, and open new branches as it takes advantage of sweeping changes to U.S. tax law and a more favorable regulatory environment.
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