Jamie Dimon, CEO and Chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during a U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs oversight hearing on Wall Street firms on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2023. gesture.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
JPMorgan has created a new global position to oversee all junior bankers to better manage their workloads in the wake of the financial crisis. die one of Bank of America In May, the partner forced Wall Street to take a look at how it treats its youngest employees.
The company is called McClendon its head of global investment banking associates and analysts said in a memo sent this month, CNBC has learned.
Partners and analysts are the two lowest levels of Wall Street’s investment banking and trading hierarchy; recent college graduates flock to these positions because of the high pay and opportunities they offer.
The memo specifically states that McClendon, a 14-year J.P. Morgan veteran and former banker who previously served as head of talent and career development, will 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 untimely death on Wall Street. Leo Lukenas III of Bank of America reportedly died in May while working 100-hour weeks on a bank merger. Later that month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank was looking at what it could learn from the tragedy.
Then, starting in August, JPMorgan’s senior managers instructed their investment banking teams that junior bankers should generally not work more than 80 hoursThis is part of a renewed focus on their workload, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said exceptions could be made for live transactions.
Dimon’s warning
Dimon criticized some of Wall Street’s entrenched practices at a finance conference at Georgetown University on Tuesday. He noted that some of the hours junior bankers work are simply due to inefficiency or tradition rather than necessity.
“A lot of investment bankers, they travel all week, and they come home and give you four tasks that you have to work on all weekend,” Dimon said. “This just isn’t right.”
He said senior bankers’ analysts and colleagues would be held accountable if they were regularly tripped up by the policy.
“You violated it,” Damon warned. “You have to stop and that will be your bonus so people know we are serious.”
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