JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and five other corporate executives joined President Obama for lunch Tuesday at the White House.
The White House said the meal - the fourth of its kind - is part of an ongoing dialogue with the business community. It comes against a backdrop of populist rhetoric from Obama, who has taken on Wall Street in a series of recent addresses and unveiled proposals designed to curb financial-sector practices the White House believes were at the root of the financial crisis.
The administration has downplayed speculation that its sharp tone with Wall Street could fray relations with a broader set of business interests.
"There are a lot of people in that lunch that have said things that are in disagreement with what the president has talked about. Simply because they might disagree on some issues doesn't mean they're not going to talk on a whole range of issues relating to the soundness of our economy," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
In addition to Dimon, Mort Zuckerman, chairman of Boston Properties Inc.; Edward B. Rust Jr., chairman and CEO of State Farm Insurance Cos.; Shelly Lazarus, chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide; James T. Hackett, president and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., and Rex W. Tillerson, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp., had lunch with Obama.
"The president wants to work closely with business to help grow jobs in this country," senior White House adviser David Axelrod said this month. "One condition for that is to ensure we don't have the kind of shenanigans that led to the collapse of the economy a year ago."
