JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon defends working with TikTok

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the company wouldn't work with clients doing something that was "truly bad."

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon on Wednesday defended the company's work with TikTok.
• Dimon was speaking at the New York Times DealBook conference.
• He said JPMorgan wouldn't work with clients "doing things that we think are truly bad."

At the New York Times DealBook conference on Wednesday, host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon why the company works with TikTok owner ByteDance, a company that some people believe is effectively an arm of the Chinese government and therefore a national security risk.

Dimon said he would not talk about specific clients, but "you can imagine the due diligence and work we do to figure out the truth about those things."

"If some of those people are doing things that we think are truly bad, we would not bank them," he added. "And of course the American government will have a point of view in that and we'll engage in those conversations too."

He went on to say that he thinks engagement with China is good.

"I'm not afraid of China," he said. "I think we should engage exactly the way the administration's doing it today. I think it's good for an American bank to be there to help multinationals around the world and China with their own development if it makes sense. If for some reason the American government says, Nope, can't do that anymore, then so be it."