æThis year it’s all about reach.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011 EDITION

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E urope is in debt crisis, theMiddle East is shaking and there’smarket panic at home. The 100Most PowerfulWomenwerechosen not just for being on top, but also for being in themid-

dle of Richter-registering events. Their power derives frommoney andmight, yes, but also (thanks to social media) reach and influence.

Quickly becoming one of themost important figures in banking,Mary Callahan Erdoes oversees $1.3 trillion as chief of J.P. MorganAssetManagement. She runs the world's fifth-biggest asset manage-ment company, which includes the second-biggest hedge fund and thenation's most prominent private bank. In her first calendar year on thejob, earnings rose 20% to $1.7 billion on $9 billion of revenues. She fastmade her mark on her business with the acquisition of Gaveá Investi-mentos, the $7.9 billion investment shop run by Arminio Fraga, Brazil'sformer chief central banker.

MaryCallahanErdoes#74 Powerful Women

At a GlanceAge: 44

Title: CEO, J.P. Morgan AssetManagement

Residence: New York, NY

On a swelteringmorning in late JulyMary CallahanErdoes is running on just three hours of sleep—andrunning late for an interview. She can’t locate thenanny for her three kids (ages 9, 7 and 4), proba-bly because the nanny thought Erdoes would re-

turn not early this morning but the day after frommeetings inEurope with Russian billionaires and German financiers. Herhomecoming gift: an urgent e-mail (subject line: “Help”) from aclient who was about to buy a company and needed her take onhow currencies would react to the news of a second bailout forGreece. “Now I am here with you,” she tells me, friendlyenough, but hinting this won’t be a leisurely meeting. “Thiswhole week has been a blur.”

But hardly unusual for the chief executive ofJ.P. Morgan Asset Management, who oversees $1.3 trillion.Erdoes runs the world’s fifth-biggest asset management com-pany, which includes the second-biggest hedge fund, the na-tion’s most prominent private bank that serves the ultra-wealthy and more than 200 other investment classes. In herfirst calendar year on the job, profits rose 20% to $1.7 billionon revenue of $9 billion.

Competing with the likes of BlackRock and Pimco makesErdoes, at age 44, one of the most powerful women onWallStreet. She is on the shortlist of eventual successors toJPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, along with securi-ties services chief Michael Cavanagh and investment bankerMatthew Zames. Erdoes claims she is far too busy to fantasizeabout such ambitions. “If you put someone in a job who isthinking for even a moment about the next job, you have the

wrong person,” she says.Standing 5 foot 2, Erdoes has a reputation at J.P. Morgan for

hard work, extreme loyalty to her staff and a knack for makingpersonal connections. She once traveled cross-country to spendthe day helping a client with Parkinson’s understand differentinvestment options. But Erdoes is no pushover. She has stoodtoe-to-toe with the toughest men in finance, billionaires likeHenry Kravis and Daniel Och, and negotiated exclusive accessto their private equity and hedge funds for J.P. Morgan’s privatebanking clients, squeezing favorable terms rare onWall Street.“She has empathy for people, and as a woman that sometimesgets misinterpreted as a weakness,” says James “Jes” Staley, thenumber two exec at J.P. Morgan, who runs its investment bank-ing unit. “She is so competitive that she can go up against anymale manager I have ever worked with.”

She must’ve gotten some of that growing up inWinnetka, Ill.,in an Irish Catholic home with three brothers. She learnedabout finance from her father, Patrick Callahan, a Chicagoinvestment banker who occasionally took her to the office.Women played a big role during her childhood, too: Erdoeswent to an all-girls Catholic high school, where she excelled atmath while becoming a nationally ranked equestrian. (Her well-connected grandmother “Izzy” got Erdoes a summer job at a fi-nancial firm.) Erdoes was the only female math major in herclass at Georgetown University, where she was afflicted bydoubts about why she was spending hours in the library solvingequations. “I can remember her saying, ‘Dad, my grade pointaverage can suffer as I go through this,’” recalls Patrick Calla-han. “I said, ‘Mary, if you are a math major and you go to an in-

The $1 TrillionWoman

How to become a superstar onWall Street?WatchMary Callahan Erdoes.

BY NATHAN VARDI

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æSEPTEMBER 12 • 2011 EDITION

“She is so competitive she can goup against any male manager.”

terview no one will ever ask you yourgrade point average.’” She went on to getanM.B.A. at Harvard, where she met herhusband, Philip Erdoes, a New York ven-ture capitalist.

In 1996 Erdoes left a corporatefinance job at Bankers Trust for J.P.Morgan’s private bank, managing fixedincome portfolios. She helped revive asnoozy business, attracting clients whohad just sold a company with moneymarket products and then broadeningthe relationships. Internally she latersettled the often contentious relationshipbetween traders and portfolio managersby merging their roles. Still, there waspushback in 2005 when Erdoes becamethe leading candidate to run the privatebank. One senior J.P. Morgan bankerwondered if it was fair to give such a bigjob to a mother who then had two youngchildren. He was overruled. “I can’timagine someone saying that about aman with two children,” Erdoes snaps.

She is the rare female comet in themale-dominated firmament of WallStreet. Part of her success sounds pedes-trian: putting in exceptionally longhours to get the attention of her bosses.“You can send a note to Mary at justabout any time, and you will get a re-sponse on the BlackBerry,” says one ofher former mentors, Gordon Fowler Jr.,now chief of Glenmede Trust. Erdoeslong ago gave up on the idea of achiev-ing a work/life balance and opted for

what she calls “work/life integration.”She sometimes heads to her children’sschool for afternoon pickup and thenreturns to the office. “There is no substi-tute for hard work,” says Erdoes. “Thereis a little luck along the way, but there isno substitute for really superhard work,first in, last out.”

Erdoes can take offense at the idea ofspecial treatment for women. During thisyear’s World Economic Forum she spokeof her disappointment with the confer-ence’s new gender quota system at lunchwith Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. Erdoesthen hopped on CNBCwith JamieDimon by her side and said, “Unfortu-nately now when people come to Davos,they may look at some of these womenand wonder, ‘Are you here because youare a female or are you here because ofyour accomplishments?’”

No question of her accomplishments.Under her regime the private bank in-creased its client base 15% a year; assetsgrew by $238 billion. By then few weresurprised when a couple of years agoDimon asked Erdoes to become chief ofthe asset management division and jointhe bank’s operating committee as part ofan executive shakeup. Good timing: Theunit was providing a high return on eq-uity without tying up the bank’s increas-ingly scarce capital. The group also at-tracted a flood of newmoney from clientsimpressed with the way J.P. Morgan hadtacked through the credit crisis.

Erdoes wanted to expand internation-ally and enlarge hedge fund and privateequity operations. On one of her firstdays on the job she found a way to doboth. She nudged Glenn Dubin, whoruns J.P. Morgan Asset Management’sbiggest hedge fund, Highbridge CapitalManagement, to buy Brazil’s Gávea In-vestimentos, the $7.9 billion investmentshop run by Armino Fraga, Brazil’s for-mer chief central banker. Fraga was notlooking for an alliance, but Dubin andErdoes helped convince him to sell amajority stake, a deal that took a year tonegotiate and close. “The feeling that wewould be connected to J.P. Morgan butthrough Mary with her very easy, objec-tive way of handling things drove thedeal,” says Fraga. “She thinks big butgets stuff done; it is a nice blend.”

As global markets continue theirstomach-clutching gyrations, Erdoes’ in-vestment group looks smart for holdingback on equities earlier this year and bet-ting instead on investment-grade andhigh-yield credit. She wants to put to-gether new funds that will focus on dis-tressed European assets and emergingones in China. Money has been flowinginto the business, a record $69 billion lastyear and $46 billion so far this year. “It’sjust nonstop trying to piece all this stufftogether, and the hardest thing is there isno road map,” says Erdoes. “It’s oddly ex-hilarating, because so many things arehappening so fast.” F

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