Jamie Dimon has a message for India: Don’t make foreign capital work harder

Jamie Dimon gets a lot of complaints from companies about paying more taxes on a deal in India than they expected. This advice is well-intentioned from the world's biggest investment bank's CEO. Dimon is bullish about India. JPMorgan Chase tops advice on equity offerings in the country, has 20% of its global workforce here, and is expected to move into Asia's largest GCC in Powai that can house 30,000 employees. Dimon's advice on tax and policy certainty should constitute vital feedback for GoI. Transparent taxes and rules can improve the perception foreign investors have about Indian bureaucracy, despite the economy's obvious momentum.

India drew less than a third of FDI into China last year. Between them, Singapore and Hong Kong received nearly 10x India's inflows. These cities act as entry points for global capital in Asia, to be routed to its most productive economies. Yet, India, famously the 'fastest growing major economy in the world' for a considerable length of time, didn't figure in the list of top 10 FDI recipients in 2025. Globally, foreign investment is surging in AI infrastructure like data centres and semiconductors - Dimon reckons hyperscaler investment could hit $1 tn next year - where India doesn't have a significant presence. Even as policies are being tweaked to make the country more inviting to chipmakers and AI hyperscalers.

Dimon also makes the point that Indians are underserved by foreign capital. This imposes extra avoidable costs on growth of the economy. If policy is responsive to emerging business trends, it should ideally not be unresponsive to long-standing investor perception. India has liberalised its financial markets to encourage banks like JPMorgan to scale up their local business. Bankers tend to go where their customers are headed. JPMorgan doesn't see India as a pure cost arbitrage play. A better-levelled playing field for foreign investment would make India a more interesting market for the bank. In the process, it would speed up India's capital market integration with the rest of the world.