Morning Coffee: Overwrought 27 year-old bankers on $456k are trying to save exhausted juniors on $150k. A new approach to long haul flights

We observed in March that working hours in banking were back to the 100-hour weeks+ that led Goldman's technology banking team to bitterly complain during the pandemic. Since then, things have possibly got worse. 

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Despite the shock of Bank of America associate Leo Lukkenas' death of a heart attack in early May, Bloomberg reports that junior bankers are working harder than ever. The average is 80 hours a week. The extreme is 140 hours a week, leaving only four hours a day, every day, for eating, sleeping and living. Junior bankers with heart pains and have been Googling "heart attack symptoms" at their desks. 

In this situation, Bloomberg says it's the "staffers" who assign junior bankers to deals who are trying to make a difference. Staffers are typically junior vice president (VP) level bankers, and are usually aged around 27-years-old. Their average pay, including salary and bonus, was around $457k (£361k) last year according to search firm Prospect Rock Partners. They are the main bulwark against exhaustion for more junior analysts and associates in their early 20s, whose pay on Wall Street starts at $153k.

It's not easy being a staffer. Bloomberg says it falls to the staffers to tell senior bankers there simply aren't enough juniors to work on their deals. Stressed senior bankers respond angrily. Stressed staffers sob and become ill themselves. It's a hard job, but one staffer told Bloomberg she took the role to protect the juniors after her own time as an analyst and associate involved bringing a sleeping bag into the office. 

In theory, staffers can appeal to a form of higher authority when they turn down senior bankers' requests for juniors: the computer systems that track junior bankers' working hours reveal when someone's already worked too much. However, juniors at Bank of America say they've been gaming the system to keep working beyond 100 hours a week. Other, wiser, juniors at JPMorgan and UBS, say they've been overstating their working hours so they can preserve a bit of free time. 

Bloomberg says banks are trying to improve junior bankers' health by providing fitness classes. But junior bankers say they don't have time to go. Instead, Bloomberg encountered a junior banker doing press-ups on the street. He said he was being punished by his boss for messing-up a pitchdeck. 

Separately, while analysts and associates snatch contemplative moments in toilets, GQ suggests that managing directors flying to meet clients can have a full meditative experience in the air.

It's called "raw-dogging" and entails foregoing all in-flight entertainment, plus - possibly all food and water. Instead, you forego all indulgences and just look out the window. "Visually, you are kind of impaired. You only get to look at the seat in front of you, to your right or left if you're at the window. All you hear is that drumming sound of the engine. It's just white noise,” says one practitioner. The experience is said to be revitalising: "I feel recharged. I feel like I've been able to have time to myself.”

Meanwhile...

Jefferies is hiring Birger Berendes, one of Bank of Americas's most-prominent rainmakers in Europe, and Citi's Michael Borch. Berendes is joining as head of continental European M&A. Borch is joining as EMEA and Asia head of transportation and logistics investment banking. (Bloomberg) 

Equity capital markets bankers are having a fine time. Initial public offerings have gotten off to their best start to a year since the heady days of 2021, with more than $20 billion raised in the first six months. (Bloomberg) 

The pushback against private equity firms recruiting analysts who haven't even arrived in their jobs is real. "There's a sickness in the private-equity industry,. I mean, it's ridiculous. They haven't even spent one day on the desk. They haven't even started training yet. They get sucked into this recruiting cycle that just becomes more and more insane every year." (Business Insider) 

Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group dismissed about 19% of the hedge fund’s investing team, the largest shakeup in its 42-year history. (Bloomberg) 

XTX hired Tim Throsby, the former head of Barclays' investment bank. He's going to be a non-executive director there. (FXNews) 

Polen Capital won't be expanding its direct lending business in Europe after all. (Debtwire) 

Eamonn McKernan, a 30-year-old programmer at market-maker Citadel Securities LLC, has been singing in public since he was 10. He says it makes him a more interesting person. “I became more outgoing and started enjoying meeting people through musical theatre. That’s also why I’m not a coder who sits behind a computer and doesn’t talk to anybody.” (Bloomberg) 

It's difficult having teenage children. “I always think, ‘bigger kids, bigger problems. Adolescence is really hard. You’re wanted and you’re not . . . You have to be around for the moment they might speak to you.” (Financial Times) 

When a few colleagues work excessively, everyone becomes more stressed. Other people working excessively indirectly influences employees’ emotional exhaustion and employees’ work engagement through the dual mechanisms of hindrance appraisal and challenge appraisal. (Springer) 

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