JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon waves his hands as he speaks during a U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Wall Street firms, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2023.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
JPMorgan Chase has created a new global role to oversee all junior bankers in an effort to better manage their workloads after death From A Bank of America Last May, Amazon forced Wall Street to examine how it treats its younger employees.
The named company Rayland McClendon CNBC has learned that its global investment bank and chief analyst sent a memo this month.
Partners and analysts are at the bottom two rungs of the Wall Street hierarchy when it comes to investment banking and trading; recent college graduates flock to these roles because of the high pay and opportunities they can provide.
The memo specifically said that McClendon, a 14-year veteran of JPMorgan and former banker who was head of talent and career development, would support the “well-being and success” of junior bankers.
The move shows how JPMorgan, the largest U.S. investment bank by revenue, is responding to the latest unexpected death on Wall Street. In May, Bank of America Corp.’s Leo Lukenas III died after working 100 hours a week on a bank merger. Later that month, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said his bank was studying what it could learn from the tragedy.
Then, starting in August, senior managers at JPMorgan instructed their investment banking teams that junior bankers should typically not work more than 80 hoursas part of a renewed focus on tracking their workload, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Exceptions can be made for direct deals, said the person, who declined to be identified, speaking about internal policy.
Damon’s warning
At a finance conference Tuesday at Georgetown University, Dimon criticized some of the entrenched practices on Wall Street. He suggested that some of the hours junior bankers put in are the result of incompetence or tradition, not necessity.
“A lot of investment bankers travel all week, then they come home and give you four assignments, and you have to work all weekend,” Dimon said. “That’s not right.”
He added that senior bankers would be held responsible if their analysts and assistants routinely stumbled in following this policy.
“You broke the law,” Damon warned us. “You need to stop it, and it will be part of your reward, so people will know we mean it.”
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