Two of Wall Street’s biggest banks are adopting new policies to mitigate overwork and burnout for their junior investment bankers. Industry insiders say it’s a hopeful start to addressing long-standing issues — but they also worry the measures won’t lead to significant change.
The boldest change-maker so far is JPMorgan, which the Wall Street Journal reported will be capping work hours at 80 per week “in most cases,” citing people familiar with the matter. Bank of America will use a new tool to better track working hours for junior bankers, the Journal report said, and flag HR when those go above 80.
The policies come amid a renewed outcry over the working conditions of young bankers following the death of Leo Lukenas III, an investment banking associate at Bank of America who died in May. Lukenas had just helped close a $2 billion acquisition as a member of Bank of America’s financial institutions group.
Lukenas’ death shook Wall Street in part because he was a 35-year-old former Green Beret, presumed to be strong and fit. Even Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, addressed the death at an investor presentation, saying that the bank’s leadership had been conferring to understand “what can we learn from it.”
While capping or closely tracking hours sounds good in theory, insiders said it can be hard to enforce. Indeed, banks have been down this road before — promising change and rolling out new guardrails — only to land back in the same position.
“I think it’s fantastic that they’re taking the concerns of junior bankers seriously and taking the situation that happened this summer seriously,” a junior banker who left Bank of America last year told Business Insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her career. But the nature of investment banking work makes it hard to believe that such guardrails will stand the test of time.
“You can track hours and promise days off, but at the end of the day, if there’s work to get done and the expectation is that it’s coming from your senior banker because a client needs it, that’s going to get done. That’s how they make money.”
A Bank of America spokesperson told BI that the new platform has been in the works for more than a year and allows for more efficient, daily reporting by BofA employees. In response to enforcement concerns, the spokesperson added: “Our practices are clear and we expect all employees and managers to follow them. When we’ve learned of violations disciplinary actions have been taken.”
JPMorgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An incoming investment banking analyst, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job prospects, described the changes as “saving face.” He completed an internship at an investment bank in New York last summer and accepted a return offer to start full time in 2025.
“It’s sad it took someone’s death to make this shockwave throughout Wall Street,” he said. “In reality, nothing is going to change.”
Working a live deal
Juniors are incentivized to outwork each other because their manager’s opinion of them determines their year-end bonus, the deals they get staffed on, and the work they get assigned. In trying to impress that person with their work ethic, they could end up feeling pressured to go against the very guardrail that’s supposed to protect them.
A finance professor who teaches aspiring investment bankers at a top business school explained it this way: “You develop a reputation as being the person who always calls 80 hours a week, and suddenly you’re the lowest analyst getting all the worst work. Unless there’s buy-in at the top that this is the best thing to do, nothing changes.” The professor spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his students’ job prospects.
Adding to skepticism over the effectiveness of these policies are some of the key exceptions being built into them.
The WSJ outlined that JPMorgan’s new capped-hours policy has “exceptions for certain circumstances, such as a live deal.” The Journal said JPMorgan is also giving US juniors get “one protected full weekend off every three months, plus protected holidays with guaranteed time off,” and mandating “pencils down” between 6 p.m. Friday and noon Saturday — “with exceptions.”
The incoming analyst and professor said such caveats stand to render policies moot because live deals are precisely when overwork becomes a problem.
“To the extent that there’s an ebb and a flow in live deals, then the 80-hour cap at least prevents an MD from working you 100 hours a week while they’re frantically pitching to try and win business,” the professor said. “But for a busy group that’s always on live deals that don’t have to go out and pitch, then it’s nothing.”
Even with a cap on working hours, no one wants to disappoint their boss. If senior banking staff don’t unilaterally enforce the cap and take it seriously, junior bankers can feel pressure to let the rules slide for the sake of the team and their own careers.
“My concern is that it won’t be enforced, that there will be too many dynamics within the office of not wanting to report to HR if a junior banker is being pressured to work extra hours,” said the incoming analyst.
BofA’s 2014 death
Bank of America, for its part, is having HR notified “when hours worked exceed 80 a week,” intervening “after prolonged periods above that limit to mandate time off,” and is offering a “protected weekend day of no work, with no specific time frame,” according to the Journal.
It’s a modification of a process the bank adopted in 2014 following the sudden death of an intern in London. Moritz Erhardt died after what was later determined to be an epileptic seizure that may have been triggered by fatigue. He had been spending long days in the office and reports at the time suggested he had not slept for three days.
By the time of Lukenas’ death in May, the bank’s system for flagging overwork — a tool known internally as the “banker’s diary” — had its share of pitfalls, according to BI’s reporting. Bank of America bankers told BI they regularly worked 100-hour workweeks and that the bank’s system for flagging employees who logged in more than 80 hours a week to human resources didn’t necessarily result in the protections promised.
“If you work 100 hours a week at Bank of America, you get a call from HR, and they ask you how you’re doing. But it’s so surface level,” BI reported someone saying at the time. “It just feels like the point of the call is to cover the bank for them to be able to say, ‘Yeah, we spoke to her, and she said she was fine.’ That’s how it made me feel.”
How these new policies are enforced may determine their success, the critics said.
“I wish that there had been some more effort on the part of senior bankers, or at least the role that they play in it. We’ve had time-tracking tools,” the person who worked at Bank of America said.
“You’re not going to change anything with respect to how much managing directors work their analysts unless you change the culture,” said the professor. “As long as the old guard says ‘Well it was this way when I was in your shoes,’ then nothing is really gonna change.”
“I’m a bit cynical about this,” he said of all the new policies, “but at least it’s something.”
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