Salomon in $30m payoff

JAMIE DIMON, who quit Wall Street investment firm Salomon Smith Barney last November, has agreed a severance package of $30m with his former firm.

Mr Dimon was a well-known Wall Street figure and his departure following huge emerging market losses came as a huge shock to the industry.

Mr Dimon was widely seen as heir apparent to Sandy Weill, who steered the firm to a merger with Citicorp to create the world's largest financial services group last year.

However, Wall Street insiders say that the rot set in some 18 months before when he and Mr Weill fell out over the status within the firm of the latter's daughter Jessica Bibliowicz.

Deryck Maughan, the former UK Treasury official who was joint co-chief executive of Salomon's with Mr Dimon, was sidelined at the same time in favour of a new management team headed by Victor Menezes and Michael Carpenter.

Mr Dimon's package includes $5.6m in cash, made up of a 1998 bonus of $4.3m and two years of his $650,000 base salary.

He will also keep $6.3m of shares that he already owns and options worth $20m which he built up over the 16 years he worked for Travellers, Salomon Smith Barney's parent company before last year's Citicorp merger.