Investment Banking Becomes Less Popular With Young Professionals
Although top executives of the biggest banks have recently talked tough about the need for employees to return to the office, many are paying heed to the complaints of their youngest workers. Goldman’s chief executive, David Solomon, said in an earnings call this month that his firm would pay more competitively and enhance rewards for performance. Goldman is also enforcing its no-work-on-Saturday rule. JPMorgan is rolling out technology to automate some aspects of analysts’ work, and recently hired more than 200 additional junior bankers to ease the pressure in a particularly busy year.
A first-year investment banking analyst in New York can make as much as $160,000 in a year, including a bonus, according to estimates from Wall Street Prep, a company that helps aspiring bankers train for the industry. But several firms, including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Barclays, have raised the salaries of junior bankers. Credit Suisse paid what it described internally as “lifestyle bonuses” of $20,000 to younger bankers.
Jefferies, another investment bank, even offered Peloton bikes, Apple Watches and other perquisites to thank more than 1,100 of its analysts and associates — the next rank up — for working hard during the pandemic. Jefferies employees “have gotten us through the hardest period we have experienced in our careers,” Rich Handler, the bank’s chief executive, and Brian Friedman, its president, wrote in a July 1 letter to staff and clients.
Still, banks tend to hew to a work culture fetishized in the 1980s, when Mr. Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” memorialized Wall Street as the home of “masters of the universe.” Young analysts worked around the clock, picked up coffee and food orders for the team, endured mindless tasks like filing trade tickets, and were subjected to pranks and verbal abuse. In exchange, they gained a foothold in one of the most lucrative careers available, when new products like bonds backed by mortgages and corporate mergers and acquisitions were creating vast profits.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/business/investment-banking-work-life-balance.html