Few people know that Tesla boss Elon Musk and CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the US, have had an 8-year “feud”.

The story is quite tragic when JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest financial institutions in the US in the field of car loans, refused to support Elon Musk, so the Tesla boss “forgot” about the debt to be paid, leading to a quarrel that lasted for many years.

The world’s second richest billionaire even “swore” directly at the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who is currently 68 years old, making the incident more tense than ever.

War of words

In 2016, Elon Musk’s companies such as Tesla and SpaceX refused JPMorgan Chase’s services, while the bank also did not want to support the billionaire’s empire.

By 2021, the two officially entered a legal battle when JPMorgan claimed that Tesla still owed $162 million in service fees to the bank, but Elon Musk refused.

“Tesla has a very negative relationship with JPMorgan, and JPMorgan hates Tesla,” Elon Musk admitted in a January 2023 court hearing.

This comes as quite a surprise to Wall Street as Elon Musk is the type of client that both JPMorgan and CEO Dimon would theoretically covet.

As one of the richest billionaires in the world, running the world’s leading electric car company, which is JPMorgan’s strength, and having many projects that have not yet been issued to the public (IPO) such as SpaceX, it is clear that Elon Musk will be welcomed by this bank.

On the contrary, Elon Musk also needs urgent money for development projects as well as Tesla’s current price war, not to mention JPMorgan’s prestigious network of advisors and financial services.

Ironically, the bank was never Tesla’s most important adviser, a role that was taken over by rivals Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley until a rift broke out in 2016.

At the time, Elon Musk wanted JPMorgan, one of the largest auto lenders in the US, to underwrite Tesla’s electric car leases, but the bank was hesitant because it didn’t know how to accurately value the life of an electric car’s battery.

Frustrated by the situation, Elon Musk called JPMorgan’s head of consumer finance in anger, yelling and threatening to pull Tesla’s business from the bank.

The call ended with Elon Musk swearing, a source close to the call said.

The incident angered CEO Dimon, who called Musk directly to respond that JPMorgan would not be bullied.

As a result, over the following years, Tesla and SpaceX partnered with JPMorgan Chase’s competitors, even though the bank once owned all of Tesla’s financial services operations.

Repression

Dealogic data shows that the Tesla empire has cooperated with 6 rival corporations of JPMorgan while this bank represented Twitter to personally negotiate, forcing Elon Musk to buy this social network for a sky-high price of 44 billion USD.

The Twitter acquisition is said to be one of the reasons why Elon Musk’s business is in trouble. Shocking statements and mass layoffs caused businesses to withdraw advertising while Twitter had to bear a debt of up to 1 billion USD because Elon Musk had to borrow money to complete the contract.

The Twitter quagmire has hit Tesla as shareholders are frustrated with the boss’s failure to focus on its core moneymaking business as Chinese rivals eat away at market share.

“JPMorgan used to hold all of Tesla’s commercial banking services, but when I asked Jamie Dimon to support a loan for Tesla’s car leasing business, he refused… So I withdrew all operations from JPMorgan, which made them hate Tesla and myself very much,” Elon Musk admitted in the 2023 lawsuit.

This hostility even became public in late 2021 when JPMorgan sued Tesla and Elon Musk for not paying the $162 million in service fees owed.

This is the transaction advisory fee that the bank helped arrange in 2014 for Tesla.

However, Elon Musk said that CEO Dimon was just making excuses because they no longer received banking service subscription agreements from their companies.

To date, the case remains at a stalemate, but a conciliatory move appears to be underway by both sides.

Reconcile

In November 2023, CEO Dimon expressed compliments about Elon Musk when asked at the New York Times DealBook conference.

“Obviously he’s a brilliant human being and has made incredible contributions to humanity. But you know, he has both strengths and weaknesses,” CEO Dimon replied.

In response, Elon Musk also praised Dimon when he made positive comments about some of the views of US Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.

“Very well said by Jamie Dimon,” Elon Musk wrote on Twitter-X.

In March 2024, JPMorgan hosted a tech summit at its Big Sky resort, an annual event for major technology banks, and surprisingly, the bank invited Elon Musk to be a speaker.

So for more than an hour, both Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon talked about many topics, thereby showing the reconciliation between the two sides after many years of hostility.

A source close to the matter said the Tesla boss went to CEO Dimon’s private room at the resort during the conference to have a private conversation for more than an hour.

This is considered a sign of breaking the ice of the “cold war” that has lasted for many years between the two empires just because of a swear word from Elon Musk.

*Source: Synthesis

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