Two of Wall Street’s largest investment banks, JPMorgan and Bank of America, are cracking down on the industry’s infamous always-on culture, which has recently been linked to the death of a Green Beret turned investment banker.
Now, JPMorgan will limit junior banker hours to 80 per week in most cases, as confirmed by the company to Coins2Day—a first for the bank.
This is in addition to the company’s existing “pencils down” period from 6 p.m. Friday to noon Saturday and a guarantee of one full weekend off every three months.
B ankers told the Wall Street Journal that a sample 80-hour workweek for a young JPMorgan banker could consist of six days of working from roughly 8:30 a.m. To 10 p.m., with short breaks for meals, or 11 hours a day for seven straight days.
In comparison, that’s still double the average American worker’s 40-hour week.
Plus, there’s a significant catch: Certain cases, like live deals, will be exempt from JPMorgan’s new policy.
Meanwhile, Bank of America—where junior bankers’ hours are technically already capped at 80, but that policy is reportedly routinely ignored—is launching an internal platform that closely monitors individual workloads this month.
The company’s new timekeeping software requires U.S.-based employees to log their hours daily rather than weekly, stating which deals they are working on and when, and which senior bankers are overseeing the assignments, as per the WSJ.
Coins2Day has reached out to Bank of America for comment. JPMorgan declined to comment.
Former Green Beret died just one year into investment banking job
Earlier this year, Leo Lukenas III, a Green Beret turned Bank of America investment banker, died of a blood clot while working more than 100 hours a week on a $2 billion deal at Bank of America.
Although the company had already reviewed and capped employees’ hours (after an intern similarly died after working multiple all-nighters in a row a decade ago), those policies are still often violated today.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, junior bankers in their droves complained to WSJ about weekly all-nighters and 100-plus hour weeks that they’re routinely forced by their seniors to lie about.
Now, banking bosses are once again reviewing the industry’s long-standing culture of overwork.
A spokeswoman for Bank of America told WSJ at the time that “our practices are clear, and we expect all employees, including managers, to follow them. When we’ve learned of violations, disciplinary actions have been taken.”
However, the publication revealed that senior bankers were swiftly told to monitor their subordinates’ workloads better and that the guidelines would be enforced more strictly going forward.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon said the bank was asking “what can we learn from” Lukenas’s death in May, before reviewing its policies.
