JPMorgan JPM Chase and Bank of America BAC plan to limit and more closely track young bankers’ hours following a Wall Street Journal investigation that detailed a dangerous culture of overwork on Wall Street.
JPMorgan will now cap junior investment bankers’ hours at 80 a week in most cases, people familiar with the matter said. Meanwhile, Bank of America is implementing a new timekeeping tool that requires junior bankers to go into more detail about how their time is spent, other people familiar with the matter said.
The changes come after the Journal investigation, based on conversations with more than three dozen current and former bankers, revealed that junior bankers at Bank of America were routinely instructed to lie about their hours to avoid exceeding hourly limits.
The question of how much to work junior employees, whose entry-level salaries can reach $200,000, has divided Wall Street for decades. Each year, thousands of young people start entry-level jobs in investment banking, attracted by the industry’s reputation for turning hard workers into millionaires. But many of them said consistent bouts of working long hours are not only mentally grueling but also hazardous to their health.
The death of a 35-year-old Bank of America associate who had been working multiple 100-hour weeks prompted an outcry in the banking industry about employee protections being ignored. Leo Lukenas III had been working on a team completing a $2 billion deal. An autopsy found he died of a blood clot that formed in a coronary artery.
The weekly cap on hours at JPMorgan, a first for the bank, is the same as the New York state limit for hours of medical residents. The bank plans to make exceptions in certain cases, such as a live deal.
Young bankers at JPMorgan already have a protected window from 6 p.m. Friday to noon Saturday and a guarantee of one full weekend off every three months. The bank, like most of its peers, has long monitored bankers’ hours through self-reported time sheets.
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