“What would Osama bin Laden not want us to do?”

Moments before the Rover sat down with investment banker Jimmy Dunne III on September 11, 2026, Dunne received a text message from Avi Barak, Managing Director of financial services at Piper Sandler. Barak wrote, “One of my favorite Jimmy Dunne-isms is, ‘What would Bin Laden NOT want me to do?’” The dryly humorous mantra, originating after the attack on 9/11, has guided Dunne ever since. 

Jimmy Dunne, a co-founder and managing partner of the investment bank Sandler O’Neill (later Piper Sandler), should have been working at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Instead, he was out golfing, attempting to qualify for the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship. That morning, Dunne lost 66 of the company’s 171 employees in their offices on floor 104 of the South Tower. Eighty-three were in the office that day. Seventeen made it out alive. 

The Rover talked to Dunne about his life on Wall Street and his experiences in the aftermath of 9/11.