Jamie Dimon Fights Cancer, Amazon Sues a Former Employee & Other News You Can't Miss Today

A LEADER'S HEALTH – Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, announced in a note to employees last night that he has been diagnosed with throat cancer but will continue to lead the company "as normal." Dimon, 58, said his cancer is "curable" and he will keep working through 8 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, only limiting travel. The "most powerful man on Wall Street," who has just celebrated a decade at JPMorgan, saw the company through the financial crisis while doubling profits, but also through the "London whale" scandal and through $20 billion in settlements to appease regulators over its selling toxic securities before the crisis or its involvement in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Such an announcement by a leader so closely associated with his company inevitably raises questions of succession plans and contingencies — remember how closely Apple's succession plan was scrutinized during the year's the company was stingy with information about Steve Jobs' health. Bloomberg reports:

“Transition has always been a question and now that will be at the top of investors’ minds,” Cole said. “They have to be very vocal about who’s going to be stepping up during the eight-week period. They’ve got to be clear with everybody about who that is.”

While such a large corporation as JPMorgan most certainly has a plan B (and C, and D...) in place, knowing who that person is isn't all that evident: at least 10 senior executives have left the bank in the past two years, thinning the ranks of those eligible for the interim top job.

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FIGHTING BACK – Dov Charney is not easily pushed out the door. The deposed CEO of American Apparel just borrowed $20 million to increase his stake in the company from 27 to 43 percent. And in what closely resembles a corporate Shakespearean play, he is now lobbying other shareholders and vying to install new board members who could help him regain his seat. Two weeks ago, Charney was ousted as chairman and suspended as CEO of the fashion chain he founded for undisclosed misconduct (Charney is used to scandal and has been cited in several moral and sexual harassment suits.) In another two weeks, if all goes to the board's plan, he should be fully stripped of his CEO title. But Charney isn't having any of it. The Los Angeles Times explains how this could work:

Charney, in a government filing Tuesday, unveiled a plan to seize control of the company. The board had refused his request for a special meeting to consider expanding the board from seven to 15 members. So Charney now plans to seek written consent from other shareholders.

Charney would need to gather written support from shareholders owning a total of more than 7% of the company's stock to amass a controlling bloc of above 50%.

That tactic, legal experts said, is allowed under Delaware law, where the company is incorporated. However, working in tandem with other shareholders could trigger American Apparel's newly adopted poison pill defense, announced Saturday. The plan would allow existing shareholders to buy new stock in the company — effectively diluting Charney's stake.

If "diluting" has you confused, there's that famous scene in The Social Network.

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WOLVES ON WALL STREET – Another corporate fight is happening, on the other end of the sexual harassment issue. Two women are suing Goldman Sachs for gender discrimination and hoping to turn it into a class action suit, opening it to thousands of other former employees. Cristina Chen-Oster, a former VP, and Shanna Orlich, a former associate, say the investment bank is an old boys' club, shortchanging women in every area: 21 percent less pay, slower promotions, and a generally hostile environment. Oh, and work outings to strip clubs, too. Chen-Oster describes being sexually assaulted by a coworker and then discouraged to report it by HR; later, after maternity leave, she saw her best assignments handed off to others. If this sounds a little "Wolf of Wall Street," well... yes, it does. "The allegations almost have a banal feel to them: find a Wall Street firm where those things don’t happen," writes Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Sheelah Kolhatkar.

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NONCOMPETE – Amazon is suing a former employee for taking a job at Google. Zoltan Szabadi, who worked for Amazon's cloud services, went on to work for Google's cloud unit, and Amazon says that's a violation of the non-compete clause he signed when joining the Seattle company. Tech employees routinely signed such agreements, vowing not to solicit clients they met at company "A" or poach employees from company "A" when they start working for company "B." At least for a while. It's contract-based temporary amnesia: in exchange for all your former employer taught you, you can only bring the full strength of your skills and your network to a competing new employer after over a year on the job. Courts routinely throw out such broad agreements (and they are unenforceable in California), which employees are often forced to sign with a gun to their head, the gun being unemployment. The irony isn't lost on anyone in tech that one would even need to sign such a deal when leading tech companies entered into a let's-not-hire-from-one-another deal, driving down wages and killing career opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people. (In their defense, Amazon was never cited as one of those companies. We're speaking of a general culture here.) Let's bear in mind those lines from the excellent post by Influencer Chris Seper last year:

For better or for worse, the idea someone will remain at a company long term is just so 2001. So if employers today are truly dedicated to their employees it means accepting they'll likely leave. I look at working with employees the same way I look at building my company. If I build a great company someone is going to want to buy it. If I have great employees who work hard, do well and grow professionally, someone will eventually want to come along and "buy" them too.

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Have you signed a non-compete and lived to regret it? Are you a former Goldman Sachs employee? If you have insider knowledge of these or other topics in the news today, write your own post explaining what's happening. Share the URL here in the comments mentioning me or tweet @LinkedInPulse. (Want to write, but don't yet have access? Leave your info here.)

Photo: Steve Jurvetson/flickr