• Private equity reps are asking to meet with college seniors headed for jobs on Wall Street.
• These "coffee chats" often lead to interviews for jobs that won't start for two years.
• The May start has soon-to-be bankers on edge at a time when they should be celebrating.

Graduation season is supposed to be filled with commencement speeches, family dinners, and tearful goodbyes. Newly minted graduates headed to Wall Street, however, are finding themselves trading libations for leveraged buyout models.

Soon-to-be junior bankers told Business Insider that they have been summoned in recent weeks to introductory meetings with buyout firms and headhunters for associate jobs that won't start for two years — when their investment banking analyst programs end.

The communications reviewed by BI were for introductory meetings, often referred to as "coffee chats," and informational webinars. They came from employees and headhunters representing firms like Apollo; Hellman & Friedman; KKR; General Atlantic; Clayton, Dubilier & Rice as well as recruiting firms like Ratio Advisors, Gold Coast, CPI, and Amity. Spokespeople for these firms either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Students said the coffee chat requests, which often precipitate more formal interviews, are taking place earlier than expected — putting them on edge about the industry's infamous recruiting frenzy, known as on-cycle recruiting.

For some, the feeling that official interviews could kick off at any moment has cast a pall over graduation season. Rather than occupying themselves with photo shoots in their caps and gowns, some finance grads are stressing over when interviews could break out.

"It's constantly monitoring your email," said an incoming first-year investment banker about the recent onslaught of meeting requests. She said she and her friends have their notifications on — "calls, texts, everything" — in order not to miss out.

The student, who hopped off the phone with BI just as her own graduation ceremony was commencing, said coffee chat meetings started hitting her inbox in early May, about four to six weeks earlier than classmates who received similar overtures last year.

"It's awful," said the student, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her future employment. "You never get a break."

On-cycle could kick off sooner than ever

Matt Ting, the founder of Peak Frameworks, which helps students prepare for Wall Street job interviews, said he's seen demand for his courses spike in the last two weeks as students gear up for on-cycle to kick off any day now.

"A lot of college grads go on a grad trip around now, which muddies things," said Ting, adding: "Some are still in school. Many firms had issues last year since it kicked off while many grads were backpacking somewhere in Asia."

The problem with the industry's on-cycle recruiting process is that no one knows when the hurricane will hit. And once it makes landfall, aspiring private-equity dealmakers are expected to drop everything to participate.

A second-year investment banker recalled getting an email around 10 p.m. when he participated in on-cycle recruiting last June. The firm's representatives asked him to interview the next morning at 8 a.m. Fortunately, he was within driving distance of the company's office. Some of his friends weren't so lucky.

"I personally felt it was too rushed, like I was taking the opportunity just because it presented itself, not because I was very calculated about it," he told BI about the experience.

The second-year banker said there is a clear distinction between coffee chats and official interviews that would signify the start of on-cycle. On-cycle recruiting, he said, only starts when a headhunter uses the word "interview" in their communication with candidates.

"The coffee chats are just an interview to get an interview," he said.

The process used to start after investment bankers got some job experience under their belts, but has been moving progressively earlier every year. Last year, the process kicked off on June 24, before many graduates had even started their jobs. The year before, it took place in July, prompting some investment banking analysts to skip out on training.

The sudden rush of coffee chat requests has students bracing for on-cycle to kick off earlier than ever this year. A college student running a college finance club said he'd heard on-cycle could begin after Harvard's graduation on May 29. An industry recruiter predicted that on-cycle recruiting might not get underway till late June, in keeping with 2024's cycle. They asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationships with prospective employers and private-equity clients.

Inside the coffee chat

Coffee chats, the step before PE firms proceed with formal interviews, may sound casual on the surface. In fact, they're a high-stakes way for recruiters to pre-screen candidates for official interviews, students told BI, so a lot is on the line.

"My advice has always been, no matter what, every coffee chat is an interview, implicitly or directly," said the second-year investment banker who participated in last year's on-cycle process.

These jobs, of which there are a coveted few, can vault early-20s professionals into the highest tier of American earners. Many tout comp prospects of more than $300,000, inclusive of salary and bonus, so the pressure for rookie masters of the universe to leave a good impression on recruiters is palpable.

A recent graduate about to start an investment banking job at a bulge bracket firm agreed. "I've had a firm tell me that I'm shortlisted," he said of his coffee chats, adding, "I've had headhunters follow up with me and say, 'Hey, by the way, this firm had great feedback on you. Let's stay close here,'" he added.

He said he moved to New York City immediately after graduation, motivated in part by the sense that he should be in a position for an early on-cycle recruiting process.

"I don't even have a couch," he confessed, so he spent his first few nights in the big city sleeping on a mattress on the floor. "Now I've got a bed frame."

"But if you want one of these jobs, you've got to play the game," he said. "And I'm just playing the game."

IPOs are making headlines again, which could mean Pat Healy's hopes for "hot and heavy" activity this year may not be completely quashed after all.

Healy is the founder and CEO of Issuer Network, which helps C-suite executives leading IPOs get multimillion-dollar marketing packages from prospective stock exchanges through "bake-off" bidding competitions. For the last 30 years, he's worked behind the scenes on some of the biggest IPOs and corporate spin-offs, including Facebook, Zillow, KraftHeinz, and 3M.

He's won praise from clients such as Jason Child, the CFO of the semiconductor company Arm (and the former CFO of Splunk), and Dick Grasso, a former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, who sat on opposite the deal table from Healy when he first started Issuer Network in 1995.

He's helped clients get everything from free advertising at Davos to NFL players attending their closing bell ceremonies.

Never heard of him? There's a reason for that. Healy, who appears to be a forefather of this type of bake-off, or contest between companies, runs his business largely by word of mouth. He also refuses to spend a dime on marketing. Just take a look at the company's website — the very picture of a mid-2000s web interface.

"I could make a big deal about some of these things, but that's not who I am," Healy, 74, told Business Insider in an interview. "I believe I do a really good job for people, and I shouldn't go around bragging about it. I just let my customers do the talking."

With IPOs back in the spotlight, thanks to the fintechs Chime and eToro, BI sat down with Healy and spoke to people who have worked with him. We wanted to understand the business and the man behind it, including how he got his start, how an exchange bake-off works, and what he's been occupied with since public offerings took a nosedive in 2022.

IPO activity has whipsawed this year with Trump's tariffs, and Healy saw several of the offerings in his docket pulled due to market volatility. Where things go next is anyone's guess, but Healy is bracing for a potential torrent of demand.

"Who knows when the sun's going to come out?" Healy said. "When it does, I expect all these guys to put their foot on the gas and come to market right away."

In the early '90s, after having held multiple CFO roles at DC-area banks, Healy started doing consulting work for Nasdaq. His job, he explained, was to disincentivize companies from leaving for the NYSE at a time when Nasdaq was a lesser-known exchange for new companies.

"I designed and helped build products that were useful to CFOs so that if they decided to leave Nasdaq, they'd have to give something up," he said. "They'd be less inclined to do so. And it created a stickiness."

That opened Healy's eyes to what he called an unfilled gap. Investment bankers advising on IPOs don't want to get caught in the crossfire between the exchanges, he said (and many banks are themselves listed in the NYSE). There are other professionals who help companies get listed on an exchange, including business consultants, but Healy's appears to have been the first to specialize in this competitive process for marketing perks.

"I discovered that CFOs really didn't have anybody to talk to when they had to make a decision about where they're going to list their stock," he said.

"There was no one else doing it. And there's still no one else doing it," he added.

Issuer Network's first client was AOL, the now (mostly) defunct internet and instant messaging service. Healy said he managed to get a meeting with the CFO and convinced him to let Healy negotiate a "co-branding package" on the company's behalf.

"I just hopped in my car and went over to Tyson's Corner," a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, where AOL was headquartered at the time. "I visited with the CFO. I said, 'Look, you're on the wrong exchange here.'"

In August 1996, AOL switched from the Nasdaq to the NYSE.

AOL was an example of a service Healy refers to as "switches." Today, most of his business involves advising companies about to go public on which exchange they should be listed. Beyond the trading style and fit of a given exchange, there are hidden levers that companies ccan pull, said Healy.

"Issuers are always focused on the listing fee," he said. "What they don't see is what the exchange is going to make off the listing."

Exchanges cannot technically buy a company's listing, but they can pick up the tab for co-branded advertisements or other marketing perks. That's where Healy comes in. He essentially creates a competition between the exchanges to see which one can offer clients the best package with their listing.

"We create pretty substantial co-branding packages and we literally bake it off," he said.

Typically, a company would contact the exchanges to say it's decided to make its listing decision "a competitive process." Then, Healy said, the company would lay out how it wants to reach customers, and the exchanges would come back with "a co-branding package commensurate with those defined outcomes." From there, it's a back-and-forth of negotiations and adjustments until the company (not Healy, as he emphasized) names a winner. The whole process typically takes about six weeks.

Healy wouldn't reveal how much these deals are worth — except for one, which is public. The package he got for Arm, a semiconductor company that went public in 2023, was worth $50 million.

"He understands exactly what the terms and conditions are for the market," Child, Arm's CFO, said. "So he can help you understand, as the issuing company, what is the benefit to the exchange? What is the value they can provide? What are the pros and cons?"

Child first hired Healy when he was Groupon's CFO for the tech company's 2011 IPO. He tapped Healy again in 2023 when Arm went public.

Arm's package with Nasdaq, for example, included several years of advertising at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. As part of its deal, another Healy client, PNC, got NFL Hall of Famers, including Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, to ring the closing bell at the NYSE with company employees in 2010.

There are moments when both sides are unhappy, said Healy, but it's all business — nothing personal.

"I maintain very good relationships with both exchanges," he said. "We have no agenda here other than the best deal for our client. And we don't favor anybody. The minute we do, we lose all credibility and we're out of business."

Of the IPOs that happened during the early days of Healy's business, only a small percentage of his clients were large enough to be eligible for the NYSE. Those that were crossed Grasso's desk, the former NYSE chief told BI.

"Some of my marketing people, in the early days of Pat's business, were highly skeptical," said Grasso, who headed the exchange from 1995 to 2003. "But after a couple of sit-downs with me, I was very comfortable that Pat was going to be fair."

Healy also advises clients on what he refers to as "spins," when a company spins off a part of its business into its own company. Issuer Network has worked on more of these during the recent IPO downturn.

"You've got Comcast spinning, Honeywell spinning, FedEx spinning. You've got quite a lineup of spins out there," he said. "We've done a lot of spins in our day, and we expect to be active in the spin market here for the foreseeable future — through the summer, at least. A lot of these deals will bleed into '26, but their exchange selection decision I expect will be made in '25."

Healy said he couldn't disclose current clients, but noted he worked on a spin with 3M last year. He advised the company as it spun off its healthcare business, now called Solventum, and led a bake-off between exchanges for both the parent and spin company at the same time.

"The winner takes all," Healy said. "So instead of getting a $5 or $10 million co-branding package for 'Spinco,' you get many times that amount for the whole enchilada."

(3M stayed with the NYSE, and Solventum joined its listings.)

Healy declined to discuss his fees, but said he follows a "satisfaction guarantee" policy: He tells clients they can "tear up our invoice" if they aren't happy — something of an anomaly on Wall Street.

Child called Healy "an old soul."

"He basically just tells you, 'Pay me what you think it's worth' when it's over," Child said. "It's like the opposite of dealing with an enterprise software person."

Healy's humble upbringing might explain his aversion to the spotlight. Growing up, he was one of nine children. His father was a mailman in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park. The town was home to a Ford manufacturing plant, what Healy described as "an ugly scene" — not necessarily the kind of place you might expect someone who brokers deals on Wall Street for some of the largest corporations in the world to get their start.

"I'm just a hick from Ohio," Healy said. "People like talking to me. And I have something good to offer them. You build a momentum over time by just keeping your nose to the grindstone, delivering good results, and just shooting straight with people."

In his first week as a freshman at Columbia University, Jordan Cancel, a Floridian who was then 18, saw just how competitive a career path to finance would be.

Outside the iconic Butler Library, known for its Neoclassical columns, mobs of students were clamoring to get to informational booths set up by the college's finance and business clubs.

"There were lines and lines of kids queued up at these club booths," Cancel, now 20, recalled in an interview with Business Insider. The students, he said, were all vying to converse with the clubs' leaders and make a good impression. "I was just honestly really overwhelmed."

Weeks later, heading to his first admissions interview with one of these clubs, the stakes felt palpable. Cancel recalled reading the Excel sheet with timeslots for a lengthy list of applicants as he waited for his name to be called. He brought plenty of résumé copies and dressed in business formal, "down to the shoes," because he'd heard that assessment metrics included attire.

"I was so beyond scared," said Cancel, who was ultimately accepted into the club.

As part of Business Insider's series on career paths in finance, we interviewed about 30 students from schools popular with Wall Street recruiters, including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, New York University, and Georgetown University. They described how campus business and finance clubs had become a crucial gateway to a career on Wall Street.

These are extracurricular, student-run groups — like a chess club or drama society — that come with names like the "investing banking club" or the "finance club." Some run full-fledged investment funds, while others are Greek fraternities that recruit students majoring in business, finance, marketing, or accounting.

What distinguishes them is that they tend to offer their members VIP access to campus recruiters, specialized training sessions, and other tools to help students snag the all-important investment banking internship, which is the best path to a full-time job after graduation.

The catch? Their perks have created a race for membership, and the admissions process to join a club can be as cutthroat as the industry itself.

This is the latest in a series of stories exploring careers in finance, how they are changing, and how these shifts are affecting young people. The clubs help Wall Street employers by creating a clear pipeline of job candidates, and firms have been known to cater to them as a result.

While it's unclear exactly when these clubs became must-haves for a Wall Street job, the people who spoke with BI tended to agree that the situation reflected a race among employers to recruit talent earlier and earlier.

A Wharton sophomore said he knew of high school students who'd started preparing to get into clubs as soon as they were accepted to college — before they'd even arrived on campus.

"I remember my senior year, after I got into college, I was just messing around. I was just having fun," but that's not the case anymore, he said, adding: "You've gotten into these places and it's like, all right, now work on building a DCF" — a valuation method. "It's outrageous."

To be sure, the club scene has long been exclusive. From the "eating clubs" at Princeton to the average sorority, organizations will choose members based on social interactions, pedigree, and background. What makes the financial and business clubs different is that they are less about making friends or exploring new interests and more about your résumé. This has led to a degree of meritocracy, with the clubs requiring wannabe members to prove they have enough know-how and genuine interest to join.

Club leaders from three schools told BI that their organizations accepted less than 10% of their freshman applicants, who numbered 150 to 300 in recent years.

The interest makes sense. Members get exclusive exposure to the industry, including training and tips from upperclassmen who have already gone through Wall Street's rigorous internship application process. Some clubs give their members real money to manage — whether a percentage of the university's endowment or capital from members and alumni.

Firm recruiters often interact with student clubs, granting members special access to meetings and events. A club might, for example, invite employees of a bank (often school alumni) to give a presentation on their summer analyst program, followed by one-on-one "coffee chats" with members.

One student club leader said he landed an investment banking internship because members of his club were invited to visit the firm's headquarters. The club leader is one of many students who asked to remain anonymous to protect their future careers.

"I have so many opportunities to network internally and have specific résumé drop links that these recruiters give to the club specifically, that are only open to members," he told BI about his campus club experience. "You want to be part of the résumé book."

The hedge fund Balyasny went to campus clubs to find candidates for its recent stock pitch competitions, which it uses to identify talent. A private equity worker, meanwhile, said the "No. 1 thing" she looked for when she was a recruiting captain of an investment bank was whether students from her alma mater had been members of "the two most prestigious investment clubs on campus."

Competition to get into campus clubs has gotten so intense that Georgetown's McDonough School of Business barred first-semester freshmen from joining them in 2023.

Some students have balked at the rule, saying it puts them behind in recruiting for Wall Street internships, which students must apply for halfway through their sophomore year.

"Kids are just so much less prepared," one student told the Georgetown Voice of the impact the rule was having on students interested in working on Wall Street.

The student publication reported that the rule wasn't making the admissions process any less competitive and was just delaying the flood of applications.

While the pressure these young people face may feel exaggerated, there are plenty of signs that the stakes are all too real. Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs have disclosed record levels of applicants to their internship programs. And Wall Street's earlier-than-ever recruiting schedule compelled Steve Sibley, a professor at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, to move an introductory corporate finance class he runs from the fall of students' sophomore year to the spring of their freshman year.

"We realized we weren't offering classes early enough for these students," he said.

The end result has been a club culture that often mimics the industry itself, including a cutthroat selection process. Some clubs conduct three to five rounds of interviews, students told BI, which can involve a résumé review (yes, your high school résumé), a social assessment, and multiple technical rounds in which you'll be grilled on real-world finance questions.

The club leader described a freshman applicant who froze and started crying after flubbing a question. It was hard to watch, and, needless to say, the student didn't make it to the next round.

"Of course it sucks when you have to reject people," the club leader said. "But at the end of the day, we have X amount of applicants and a limited number of spots. And that is literally just how the industry is set up as well. It's hypercompetitive, it's overwhelming, and you have to be pushing constantly."

Most of the students BI spoke with echoed that low acceptance rates were extreme and sometimes ridiculous. They also said it's this way for a reason, including the difficulty of managing and teaching hundreds of other students.

"We only have so much bandwidth as people running the club," a Wharton junior said. "The impact is lower if you're dealing with 300."

Also, for better or worse, being a sought-after club brings a level of prestige and bragging rights for those who manage to get in.

"You want to be in the club where so many people want to get in," the club leader said.

As a freshman at Georgetown University in the fall of 2022, Jonathan Rothschild refused to apply to finance clubs his first semester, he said, once he learned about the rigorous interview processes and acceptance rates of under 10%.

"I was like, look, I just got here. I don't even know if I want to be in this club, let alone if I want to do five rounds of interviews for it," he told BI.

"I don't think that's how we should be treating people freshman year."

That choice led him to Georgetown Collegiate Investors during his second semester, a student-owned investment fund that lets any student participate in its training program and later become a "junior analyst" on the team if they pass a basic knowledge test.

The fund has more than $150,000 in assets under management, money raised from current and former student members. Rothschild, now a junior and co-CEO of GCI, argues that the selective of these clubs favors people who have been exposed to finance early in life.

"If you're only accepting 5% of the people, you're getting the people who already know what they're doing," he said, adding: "I'm not saying take everyone, but you could take 25% of people at Georgetown and be fine."

The very students who lack the background or knowledge to get into these clubs are the ones who stand to benefit most, he said.

"That's always been our selling point: We'll train you, we'll get you ready, you don't need prior knowledge, we will teach you."

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Have a story to tell? Reach out to Emmalyse Brownstein via email at [email protected], or the encrypted app Signal/SMS at (305) 857-5516.

• Carter McIntosh, a 28-year-old Jefferies banker, died of a toxic mix of drugs, BI has learned.
• The Dallas medical examiner ruled the death an accident.
• McIntosh was an associate on Jefferies' tech, media, and telecom team in Dallas

The 28-year-old banker whose death prompted online attacks against Jefferies died from the "toxic effects" of fentanyl and cocaine, the Dallas medical examiner said.

Carter McIntosh, an associate with the bank's technology, media, and telecommunications coverage team in Dallas, was found dead in his apartment in January, leading Jefferies CEO Richard Handler to issue a memo defending the bank from "unfounded" speculation about the banker's cause of death.

The police initially ruled it an "unexplained death." An autopsy report by the medical examiner's office now says McIntosh's death was an accident caused by the "combined toxic effects" of fentanyl and cocaine, according to a copy of the report obtained by Business Insider.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, has proved a rising threat in the US, fueling an alarming surge in overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says overdoses remain the No. 1 killer of Americans ages 18 to 44.

"Our hearts grieve for Carter and our sincere condolences to his family, coworkers, and friends. Carter is missed by many at Jefferies and beyond," Handler told BI in a statement on Wednesday.

In the wake of McIntosh's death, Handler and the firm's president, Brian Friedman, released a memo to staff expressing their "tremendous sadness" and offering support to employees.

Handler also criticized what he called "unfounded, vitriolic attacks" against Jefferies' work culture.

"At this point, nobody knows exactly what happened and engaging in speculation with cynical assumptions serves no useful purpose and only adds to the grief that the McIntosh family is suffering," the memo said.

McIntosh worked at other financial services firms before joining Jefferies, including stints in equity research at Goldman Sachs and as an investment banking analyst at Moelis & Co., his LinkedIn page said. Before that, he attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

Twenty years ago, getting jobs in private equity was an ultra-niche choice for MBA grads at the prestigious Wharton School.

According to the school's career report for 2004, just over 4% of MBA students in that year's graduating class were headed for jobs in private equity and venture capital. By contrast, more than 23% had landed investment banking and brokerage jobs.

Today, it's a different story: Just over 15% of the 2024 class went to work at investment banks, while close to 13% took jobs with firms that invest in privately held companies.

To some extent, this isn't a surprise as businesses once viewed as the Wild West of finance catch up to long-standing bank behemoths in market share, power, and prestige. Blackstone has gone from managing about $32 million in assets two decades ago to more than $1 trillion today. Citadel's market-making arm now handles one in every four trades on the stock market.

As part of Business Insider's series on career paths in finance, we set out to learn how these transformations are shaping career aspirations and trajectories. Do the old strongholds of prestige still remain in the eyes of Gen Z? Or have opinions — and options — changed?

We surveyed undergraduate finance students and members of campus finance clubs — stepping stones to Wall Street internships — about their career tracks, expectations, and motivations. In addition to the 150 survey responses we received across about a dozen schools (which is not a scientifically representative sample), we interviewed about 30 students from schools such as the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and New York University. They asked to be anonymous to protect their future careers.

A lot has changed, and at the same time, nothing really has. In our survey, names like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan stuck out in popularity — but so did Centerview Partners, a boutique M&A shop, and Blackstone, the trillion-dollar alternative asset manager.

"I think the sentiment definitely is shifting," a Columbia University junior said. "The interest is more varied in terms of the old path of just, 'I want to go to a big bank.'"

When asked which financial firm or other employer they'd most like to work for, nearly an even number of respondants mentioned investment banks (59) and buy-side firms, a category that covers private equity firms and hedge funds (57). A good chunk of people — 28 — were unsure or unspecific about a dream firm. (These numbers don't add up to the 150 total respondents because not everyone answered this question, some answers were not applicable, and others mentioned multiple firms in their write-in answer.)

Across both banking and the buy side (so named because these firms tend to buy assets instead of selling products and services), a preference for brand names and large firms stood out.

Thirty-five responses mentioned the top 10 investment banks by assets, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. Some of the reasons given included "reputation," "talented people to learn from," "prestige," and the ability to get an even better job down the road (known in the industry, and on the survey, as "exit opportunities").

Goldman Sachs was the most mentioned firm in the survey responses, with 14 write-in responses, followed by JPMorgan (12) as a close second.

Thirty-one responses mentioned the top 10 private equity firms by assets, including KKR, Blackstone, and Apollo. Another four mentioned the top 10 hedge funds by assets, including Citadel and Bridgewater. Reasons given included "higher pay and good preparation to one day start my own firm," "working on the biggest deals in the world," and "the ideal blend of prestige and work-life balance."

Of those, Blackstone, the world's largest alternative assets manager, was the standout for most votes (11).

One Columbia junior said he accepted an internship at a large bank because he's unsure which area of finance he wants to pursue long term.

"In the same firm, they are doing so many different things. They're engaging with these companies, and through multiple different touch points instead of doing just advisory," he said of his choice to work for one of the largest and most established banks, a category known as bulge bracket.

The Wharton student agreed.

"I don't know what I want to do. But I know I want to be in the finance industry," he said. "I want to learn as much as I possibly can. So if I were to design a perfect job right out of college, it honestly would be a bulge bracket investment banking job."

Our survey results and interviews found that smaller firms, including so-called boutique banks, were strong contenders. The Columbia junior, for example, described being torn between the bulge-bracket offer he accepted and an offer from a boutique bank.

When seeking advice about which one to choose, he noticed a generational divide.

"Almost all the young people I talked to, let's say ages 32 and below, said go to the boutique," he told BI about his experience. "Everyone 32 and above said go to the bulge bracket."

When asked which finance firm or other employer they would most like to work for and why, 26 respondents mentioned non-bulge-bracket banks, including the boutique firms Centerview, Evercore, and Perella Weinberg.

Centerview, which advised Paramount on its $28 billion merger with Skydance in 2024, is known for being one of the highest payers for junior analysts on the street. It was the fourth-most-written-in response, with nine students saying they aspired to work there.

Boutique banks tend to focus on specific business lines or even industries, like entertainment or tech. These firms have developed a reputation for giving young bankers more hands-on deal experience, better work-life balance, and, in some cases, better pay.

The Columbia junior, for example, highlighted what he saw as a greater opportunity to stand out at a smaller firm. "You're not going to be a cog in a wheel simply because the denominator is smaller, you are now more important, you get to do more."

Another Columbia student, a sophomore, said boutique banks were the new mark of prestige among some of his classmates, while describing bulge brackets as the "baseline."

"It's like, OK, Columbia has been a target school for bulge brackets for however long, but the new name brands on the street are different now. It's Centerview, it's Moelis, and it's Evercore," he said.

The smaller-is-better crowd was also visible on the buy side. Twenty-nine responses mentioned firms that are smaller than the top 10 private equity firms or hedge funds by assets, including buy-side shops like Warburg Pincus, Silver Point Capital, and Hellman & Friedman. The reasons given included "excellent culture," "meaningful work," and "better work-life balance."

Students were also asked to share their dream finance jobs — not the one they expect to have upon graduation, but the one they want down the road. Buy-side jobs were the most popular: Eighty-five answers (equivalent to about 57% of respondents) mentioned private equity, hedge funds, or venture capital in some way.

The recruiting process for these some of these jobs can get pretty intense. According to the students BI spoke with, the benefits include more interesting work and slightly less grueling hours.

Autonomy and leadership also featured prominently among the survey responses, with 29 writing about entrepreneurship, running their own business, or holding a C-suite position.

These write-in answers included aspirations like being an "entrepreneur," "starting my own business," "running my own investment firm," and becoming a "CFO of a Fortune 500 company" or "CIO of a hedge fund."

Many of these answers overlapped with buy-side aspirations — like the students who said their dream was to "own my own hedge fund," or "run my own small PE firm."

Notably, just 15 answers about long-term dream jobs in finance mentioned banking.

About a dozen responses reflected uncertainty or long-term ambitions elsewhere, like in corporate law. A handful of those answers also expressed some of the values Gen Z is widely known for, saying they wanted to have a job that allowed them to "take time off while maintaining a life/raising a family," "be happy with where I work everyday," and "use finance for social good."

(Again, these numbers don't add up to the 150 total respondents because not everyone answered this question, some answers were not applicable, and others mentioned multiple dream jobs in their write-in answer.)

The Columbia junior doesn't know what he wants to do long term within finance, but he summed up his dream job this way:

"I just think dealing with the most complex problems, in whatever respective space you're in, is the ideal job for me," he said. "That's what gets me excited."

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The path to working on Wall Street is a long and rigorous obstacle course.

Young people who aspire to become dealmakers, traders, or investors must now begin as soon as they arrive at college. From there, it's an immediate dash to join campus finance clubs, hobnob with industry professionals, and fill a résumé with pre-internship accolades — all while maintaining a perfect GPA.

The steps are an unofficial yet unspokenly understood requirement among students at top target schools (plus those elsewhere with the fortune of being in the know). Some financial institutions — namely investment banks, where most Wall Streeters start out — now scout young talent during their sophomore year of college. That means those who wait, or don't learn the recruiting game quickly enough, risk being left behind altogether.

"It forces students to focus very early at a time when, in my opinion, they should be not focusing, but actually broadening their perspectives," Gustavo Schwed, an NYU professor who worked in investment banking and private equity before switching to academia, said.

A Wharton student who recently signed a 2026 internship offer at an investment bank put it this way: "I am a sophomore in college, and it's kind of outrageous that we have to decide at this age — I just turned 20 — what my first job is out of college."

The new finance career path

Business Insider talked to college students, recruiters, finance executives, professors, and many others about what it takes to build a career in finance in 2025. We compiled what we learned into a series of stories and videos that started rolling out on April 16 and which will continue through May. The series seeks to help students better understand what it takes to break into Wall Street and what to expect once they get there.

Check back here to see the latest. We will delve into what it's really like to work for a hedge fund, how the face of Wall Street has changed, and the challenges of getting into the college clubs needed to snag that all-important internship, among other topics.

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_{Article credits
Reporters: Emmalyse Brownstein, Bradley Saacks, Alex Morrell, Alex Nicoll, Bianca Chan
Editors: Kaja Whitehouse, Michelle Abrego, Jeffrey Cane, Jamie Heller
Copy Editors: Kevin Kaplan
Graphics and art: Alyssa Powell, Annie Fu, Randy Yeip, Andy Kiersz,}

• 2025 has so far been a letdown for investment bankers who expected to see a surge in deal activity
• Junior banker hours remain long, even despite fewer deals, managing director Eric Stetler told BI
• He shared how their roles change in a lull, and gave tips on what they can do to make the most of it

You might think that a market downturn and an all-but-frozen dealmaking environment would mean that the young employees of Wall Street known for working gruelingly long hours might get a reprieve.

Think again.

Fewer deals does not mean fewer hours, said Eric Stetler, the head of M&A at the boutique advisory firm D.A. Davidson.

"It's generally about the same," he said about the length of their days at the desk. "Your activities just shift."

The White House's slew of unpredictable trade policies have put investment banking clients in "wait-and-see mode," as bank execs put it in company earnings calls this week. Indeed, investment banking fees for the first quarter of the year were down by 18% at Goldman Sachs from the previous quarter, for example.

When live deals are flowing, young analysts and associates are known to sometimes clock in 100-hour work weeks. That's because they're the direct support staff to senior bankers, whose jobs are to serve and please corporate clients immediately, and at almost any cost. They help their bosses in pitching, due diligence, and deal execution and are often tasked with the more tedious parts of the job like summarizing industry research, formatting financial models, and editing presentation materials.

When deals aren't flowing, junior bankers don't suddenly start going home for dinner. They become master marketers.

"For a junior banker that environment's a little more frustrating I think," Stetler told BI. "For someone that's been in it a while, you understand the ups and downs."

His approach to leading and motivating young employees at his firm has had to adapt with the shifting market.

"Working on business development and marketing skills as someone in their mid-twenties is not a bad thing," he said, "even though it may not be exactly what you want to do at that time."

In an interview with Business Insider, Stetler shared how bankers' roles shift during a slowdown, what juniors should do to make the most of it, and how he motivates his own employees to stay driven.

Making lemonade

Though hours don't change much for junior bankers, activities and tasks do. Analysts and associates go from working on deals to focusing most of their time on involvement in business development and marketing.

"A lot of the administrative stuff that falls behind when the deal markets are crazy, you end up catching up on," Stetler said.

With little control over the fact that deals are lulled, how exactly can junior bankers make the most of a slow period?

"Having a bit of downtime may give them the chance to work with senior bankers on the items that are important, but get deprioritized when the market is hot," he said, like industry content, newsletters, and updating transaction databases.

These skills might sound drab to a person who signed up to advise companies and CEOs on multi-million dollar investments. But Stetler said these skills can actually help advance young people's careers later on.

"Slower periods present openings for junior bankers to think beyond models, data rooms," he said. "They may be able to learn more about a specific industry through research and content creation or help identify opportunities for senior banker tracking."

One idea Stetler said juniors can do to impress their bosses: "Outline an idea for a new piece of industry content, get the theme approved by the senior banker, and contribute to the research and drafting of the piece."

They might also "help review a space adjacent to current sector coverage" to identify opportunities for the team to track going forward.

Overall, it's important to remain driven and optimistic to make an impression with senior bankers.

"Showing interest in marketing and business development topics as a junior banker as well as keeping a positive attitude really helps," he said.

Leading through a downturn

Stetler knows a thing or two about beginning a career in a tough market. He graduated from college in 2008, and shortly after started as an analyst at Baird, where he worked for nearly 13 years before joining D.A. Davidson.

"Back then, it was demoralizing. You get into the office, you knew deals weren't happening, and you still had to be there," he said of the global financial crisis.

To be sure, he said he doesn't think we're currently in a comparable situation.

"I still think where we are with this is, it isn't permanent. There are things being worked through, but there hasn't been a slowdown in work."

To that end, he says he knows it can be challenging for young people to see the forest through the trees. Many junior bankers haven't seen market slowdowns, and COVID was unique.

"Most junior bankers got into investment banking for the deal experience, and the activities that take place during a slower period don't necessarily show the same way on a resume. Junior bankers also put in a tremendous amount of work to support transactions — when transactions are delayed or paused, this can impact morale in a potentially negative way."

But ups and downs are a natural part of a career in finance. Stetler said he and his team are "educating our own people about how this happens, how it works, what comp might look like. There are a lot of things involved with managing."

The way you respond and handle work during a period like this may even help you get promoted — or not.

"The junior banker experience is about developing various skills, and while deal execution is a big part of it, we want to see they can be a well-rounded associate or even a VP down the line. At D.A. Davidson, we want to promote from within and have a bias for it," he said.

When Gustavo Schwed was considering a career in finance in the late 1980s, climbing the corporate ladder was a preoccupation for working people, not students.

"People didn't really give their job as much thought until, really, the summer between their junior and senior year — if then," said Schwed, a New York University professor who started in investment banking and then worked in private equity for about 25 years.

The path to enter Wall Street has changed radically since then. Investment banks now compete with multibillion-dollar hedge funds, private equity firms, "elite boutique" banks, and even tech companies for talent, resulting in a mad rush for recruits earlier than ever.

Students who aspire to become dealmakers, traders, and investors must begin preparing as soon as their freshman year to win the internships that open the right doors. Those who wait or don't learn the recruiting game quickly enough risk being left behind. (This is the first in a series of stories about how the path to Wall Street is changing and the impact it is having on young people and the industry at large.)

Even willing participants recognize the absurdity. A Wharton student who recently signed a 2026 internship offer at an investment bank put it this way: "I am a sophomore in college, and it's kind of outrageous that we have to decide at this age — I just turned 20 — what my first job is out of college."

So why are they doing it? What is motivating record numbers of students in some cases to pursue Wall Street jobs when the path is such an obstacle course? And do they understand how crushing an entry-level job on Wall Street can be, with stories of people collapsing from exhaustion?

To help answer these questions, Business Insider sent out a survey to undergraduate finance students and members of campus finance clubs — which are often used as a stepping stone to a Wall Street internship — asking about their career tracks, expectations, and motivations. In addition to the 150 survey responses we received across about a dozen schools (which is not a scientifically representative sample), we also interviewed about 30 students from schools such as the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, and New York University. They asked to be anonymous to protect their future careers.

The students we talked to expressed complicated feelings about their chosen career track. Some of them have embraced the challenge, while others said they worried about the industry's reputation for chewing up young talent. They are skeptical of Wall Street institutions' recent promises to do more to protect them from burnout, but ultimately feel they have little choice if they want a career in investment banking, private equity, or hedge funds.

Investment banking still rules at the entry level

It used to be that investment banking was the only point of entry to the vast majority of finance jobs, but many hedge funds and private equity firms, including the investment behemoths Balyasny and Citadel, are now investing in their own training programs.

Despite the growing number of options, most of our survey respondents — 74% — said they planned to start their finance careers through the traditional investment banking path. In interviews, students said they saw this path as opening the most doors, making it ideal for people who aren't quite sure what they want to be when they grow up.

As one Columbia junior who has secured an investment bank internship explained: Investment banking is simply ground zero for every other job in finance. (It also offers the most entry-level jobs in finance.)

"There's so many avenues in which you can kind of exit," the Columbia student said, referencing opportunities to get recruited to work for hedge funds, private equity, and even private credit, which raises money to make unregulated loans.

The Wharton student agreed, saying the range of possibilities was the most attractive reason to pursue banking after graduation.

"If I like it, I can stay with it. If I don't, there are other opportunities out there," he said. "I think working at a job like investment banking keeps those doors open."

The downsides to a career in finance

When the students were asked to rate their level of concern with five common topics relevant to a finance career — on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being not concerned about a given point and 4 being very concerned — long hours had the highest average score, followed by high stress.

Entry-level investment bankers, who carry titles like analyst and associate, are known to clock in anywhere from 80 to 100 hours a week, often working on tedious tasks like formatting PowerPoint presentations and cleaning up Excel sheets. The junior banker lifestyle can be so grueling that entire businesses have spawned to poke fun at it online. Hours can be less onerous at private equity and other so-called buyside firms, but still much more than a 9-to-5 job.

The debate about junior banker working conditions intensified during the pandemic, when M&A jumped to record levels, and again last year following the death of a 35-year-old Bank of America associate. His cause of death was a coronary blood clot, which prompted widespread speculation and drew attention within the bank to what current and former employees said were weaknesses in systems for tracking junior banker hours. Bank of America and JPMorgan later announced new guardrails meant to prevent burnout.

The students who spoke with BI, however, said they didn't believe Wall Street's hard-charging apprenticeship model would change.

"Who are the decision-makers? It's people who are 20, 30 years older. They don't care. It's just the generation they were raised in," a junior at New York University said.

A second NYU student described the long hours and tedious work as a rite of passage — a badge of honor, of sorts.

"I feel like it's a culture of giving back, but in a negative way. People I talk to are like: 'Wow, you guys are so lucky as analysts, you guys can actually go home to sleep. Back in my day, you slept at the desk.'"

What they want

To understand students' motivations for pursuing finance careers, we asked them to score the importance of five factors they might want in their first job on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being "not important" and 4 "very important."

Students rated compensation and exit opportunities, or the ability to transition to better roles or firms, as the two most important factors.

Investment banks pay their entry-level analysts upward of $110,000 in base salary with year-end bonuses that can add anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 to their yearly compensation, depending on deal activity. (By comparison, the average yearly wage in the US is about $66,000, according to the Social Security Administration.)

Finances also ranked highly when it came to long-term goals. When asked about their future careers, the majority rated financial freedom as the most important quality. Meaningful work and the ability to control their own schedules ranked lowest in importance on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the most important.

What students really want could also be gleaned from their write-in answers to other survey questions. When asked about their dream finance jobs, many of them spoke of investing or becoming their own boss one day.

Some 29 out of 150 write-in responses included aspirations of entrepreneurship, running their own business, or holding a C-Suite position.

These responses included aspirations like being an "entrepreneur," "starting my own business," "running my own investment firm," as well as becoming a "CFO of a Fortune 500 company" and "CIO of a hedge fund."

Many of these answers also overlapped with buy-side aspirations — like students who said their dream was to "own my own hedge fund," or "run my own small PE firm."

Eighty-five answers (equivalent to about 57% of respondents) mentioned private equity, hedge funds, or venture capital in some way. Notably, just 15 answers about long-term dream jobs in finance mentioned banking.

Determined to succeed

Students interviewed by BI seemed to understand the challenges they could face on Wall Street. Some said they welcomed the grind.

"My goal, especially right out of college in those first five years from when I'm 22 to like 27, is to work as hard as I can," the sophomore at Wharton told BI, adding, "I think people that work hard get rewarded."

Other students seemed to see Wall Street's hard-charging apprenticeship model as the price of entry. An NYU student whose older sibling also took the investment banking career track said she was nervous but pushing ahead.

"My dad was really worried," she said of her sibling's early banking career. "It does scare me, but that's just part of the job. We already know that. You know this going into it."

Of course, few undergrads have actually experienced 80- or 100-hour workweeks, as another Georgetown student noted.

"Saying that to a lot of people who have not worked even, like, 40 hours in a week before in their lives with no conceptualization of a normal workweek — that's going to go in one ear and come out the other," the student said.

This student avoided the traditional investment banking route specifically because of its reputation for grinding down young talent.

"Part of my consideration for asset management was definitely like, I would not risk my own mortality by a career choice," he told BI.

And while most seemed to accept the prospect of being tethered to their desks, one student said she planned to push back if demands got too onerous.

"Any job, regardless of exit opportunities, how much you're passionate about the job, how much larger your pay — it should not be killing its employees," said the second NYU student, who is set to intern at an investment bank this summer. "There's just certain things I won't compromise regardless of outcome. I think dying is one of those things. You know, if you think you're going to be hospitalized in a day, you feel faint in a day, like, I think you just have to set boundaries."

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• JPMorgan's 1Q earnings call was focused more on what the bank's data might say about the economy.
• Banks execs said consumers are front-loading spending as corporate clients pause activity.
• Jamie Dimon pushed for a quick resolution of trade deals to stabilize the global economy.

Consumers are trying to front-run tariffs, companies are in "wait-and-see" mode, and market volatility shows no sign of waning.

These are just some of the trends to emerge from JPMorgan Chase's first-quarter earnings call on Friday as analysts and investors clamored for insights into how Trump's tariff policies might be impacting the broader economy. The bank reported better-than-expected results for the three months ending March 31, but all eyes were on what bank execs might have gleaned about the economy since Trump's tariff policies went into effect on April 2.

CEO Jamie Dimon called upon the Trump administration to finish negotiating trade deals and get it done sooner rather than later. And when asked how the current economic and political situation compares to the past, Dimon said it remains to be seen.

"This is different. This is the global economy," he said in response to an analyst's question. "The most important thing to me is the Western world stays together economically, when we get through all this, and militarily, to keep the world safe and free for democracy. That is the most important thing."

Consumer spending patterns

Chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum described an economy that is still intact but bracing for trouble ahead. Consumers are still spending, but some of that is "front-loading spending" to get ahead of tariffs, Barnum said.

"Another thing that we are seeing, looking at the April data, would appear to be a little bit of front-loading of spending, specifically in items that might have prices go up as a function of tariffs," Barnum said.

The bank saw some weakened spending among lower-income consumers but "no evidence of distress." In fact, Barnum said, some of the increases in April spending were driven by lower-income consumers.

Barnum also said the bank has seen a dip in spending on travel but was reluctant to draw conclusions about whether this suggests a tightening of the purse strings.

"It's not obvious to us that that's necessarily an indicator for broader patterns," Barnum said. "There are a variety of potential explanations for the narrow drop in airline spend."

Loans and liquidity

The bank boosted the amount it sets aside for credit losses by $973 million to $3.3 billion, citing a worse macroeconomic outlook.

Barnum said JPMorgan is not yet seeing a deterioration of lending quality, and loans are still being paid at the expected rate. Still, the bank is building reserves of $441 million for consumer lending and $549 million for wholesale lending to protect against people and companies not paying their loans.

Barnum said the firm has not seen "meaningful, observable draws" from clients, suggesting that client are not withdrawing their funds or using up their lines of credit to deal with losses.

He said some of the firm's large institutional clients have discussed shoring up liquidity, but the firm has not seen clients take out more loans to meet those liquidity needs. Loans tied to market activity have increased, however.

Trading and banking

Both JPMorgan and its crosstown rival Morgan Stanley posted strong first-quarter revenues tied to their role executing trades for large investors, a trend that's only expected to have accelerated since Trump's tariffs sent markets spinning on April 2.

"I think this just happened to be very favorable conditions that we've managed very successfully," said Barnum.

Barnum said that market conditions are causing them to adopt "a cautious stance" on the investment banking outlook and are seeing a "wait-and-see" attitude from corporate clients.

"I think we would characterize what we're hearing from our corporate clients as a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude," Barnum said. "I do think you see obvious differences across sectors. Some sectors are going to be much more exposed than others and have more complicated problems to solve."

• Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin returned to his Florida high school on Tuesday.
• He spoke about his "Call of Duty" addiction and bombing his chem exam.
• He also gave them advice on getting a job, learning to communicate, and much more.

Billionaire Ken Griffin has been raising the profile of Florida since 2022 when he announced plans to move his hedge fund and trading empire to Miami, where they are now headquartered.

His companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities, are building a new 54-story headquarters building in Miami's Brickell neighborhood. Last year, the Citadel CEO donated $50 million to the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer. He's also been making political allies in the state.

In the latest show of his dedication to the Sunshine State, Griffin on Tuesday went to Boca Raton High School, his alma mater, to speak to students about his education and career journey. The roughly one-hour conversation was moderated by Renen Antonacci, a senior who reached out to Ken with the invitation.

With his mother and sister in the audience, Griffin shared some of the lessons he's learned as a businessman and leader, as well as the top qualities he looks for in entry-level employees. He advised young people to put down their phones and learn to communicate. He also got personal, opening up about the teacher who helped him learn to write and the "thousands of hours" he has spent playing the video game "Call of Duty" (he blamed the habit on his sister).

Here are the highlights of the school's wide-ranging "fireside chat" with Griffin, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by Business Insider.

Ken's early years

When asked if he would have done anything different with his high school career, Griffin recalled the time he bombed on his organic chemistry exam, and the teacher gathered the students around his desk to use it as a teaching moment.

"I had to work through some emotional damage from that," he joked.

"In all seriousness, though, you don't want to go through life thinking about regret," he said, adding, "If there was a challenge where you fell short, learn from it, but don't dwell on it."

He credited his mom, who was sitting in the front row, with demanding that he finish college, and he gave a shoutout to his high school English teacher, Kathryn Lindgren, for tutoring him in writing.

"She was an incredibly important part of my life story. I was a freshman, and after several weeks, she took me aside — she was my English teacher — and said, 'I've heard from the other teachers that you're pretty good at math and science, but you don't know how to write.'"

Griffin said Lindgren took it upon herself to tutor him in writing for the next two years, he said, adding, "It changed my life."

On technology

At one point, the moderator asked Griffin about his love of the popular video game "Call of Duty," and he acknowledged that he's been a fan for 15 years.

"My sister is in the front row of this audience, and she is the one who convinced me to play the game. She was a diehard, and she told me, you've got to play this game and it has now taken up thousands of hours of my life," he said.

At the same time, he encouraged the students to put the technology away so they can practice their interpersonal communication skills.

"You're not going to find many successful people in politics, public service, or business who are masters in text messaging," he said, adding, "It's the person who can command a room — that can lead a conversation and comfortably engage with someone in front of or behind a desk. Interpersonal skills are very important, and they have been deemphasized in the age of technology."

"Turn your phone off. See your friends, don't text your friends," he said.

Getting an education

Griffin advised students to use their college years wisely, saying that higher education is where you "learn how to learn." He also suggested they use college to broaden their horizons.

"What's amazing is many of you in this room are certain about what you're going to do. And I'm going to tell you this, you're almost certainly wrong," he said before sharing his own experience.

"In college, I was planning to go into private equity," he said.

He also suggested they give back by tutoring less advantaged students, which he said he did in his 20s in Chicago.

"Everybody in this room should tutor a young man or woman, and in particular, in an inner-city school, to see the education crisis we have in America," he said.

What he looks for in Citadel applicants

Griffin said communication is key for any job candidate.

"When I started my career, the person who was my primary provider of capital had a plaque in his office that said, 'If we're all going to eat, someone has to sell.'"

"Number one, we look for intellect, aptitude, and communication skills," he said. Grit, perseverance, and determination are among the other traits he mentioned.

"The bottom line is that no matter what you do, you're going to face setbacks. People who are resilient and learn from those setbacks move forward. People who are not fall by the wayside."

He also spoke about the importance of problem-solving.

"It's important to recognize that society rewards problem solvers. If you want to have a set of skills that you're really good at, solving problems should be high on the list," he said.

"Let's be clear, raise your hand in this room if you have a smartphone. Are you angry at the companies that created that technology? No. Great businesses create products that consumers value. This is often lost in the anti-capitalist rhetoric in America," he said, adding, "I enjoy living a life where there are great companies run by teams of people who enjoy solving the problems that I face in day-to-day life."

• JPMorgan is renaming its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, per a company memo.
• The company said it'll refer to them as "diversity, opportunity, and inclusion" initiatives.
• It comes as Wall Street banks bow to pressure from Washington over DEI.

JPMorgan is renaming its diversity, equity, and inclusion-focused initiatives and reducing some DEI-related employee trainings, according to an internal memo reviewed by Business Insider.

The move comes as corporate America bows to Washington's efforts to undo efforts aimed at advancing workplace diversity under President Donald Trump. It follows similar steps by other Wall Street banks, technology, and retail companies — including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Amazon, and Target — which have also pulled back on years-long promises to promote inclusion in their hiring practices.

The country's biggest bank by assets will be "changing 'equity' to 'opportunity'" and renaming the organization to "Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion (DOI)," said the memo, which was signed by Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Piepszak and sent on Friday morning.

Piepszak wrote that "the 'e' always meant equal opportunity to us, not equal outcomes," and that JPMorgan believes "this more accurately reflects our ongoing approach to reach the most customers and clients to grow our business, create an inclusive workplace for our employees and increase access to opportunities."

A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson told BI on Friday that the bank had "already started on these changes two years ago," following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions, ruling it effectively unconstitutional.

"We've always said it's about merit, equal access to opportunity, not outcomes, no illegal quotas," the spokesperson added.

Trump in January signed an executive order called "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity," intended to curtail what he called "illegal preferences and discrimination."

Trump said that public and private sector institutions have "adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called 'diversity, equity, and inclusion.'" He added that such programs "violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation."

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank would "continue to reach out to" the Black, Hispanic, LGBT, and veterans communities. In February, he took a more critical tone at a company town hall, saying: "I saw how we were spending money on some of this stupid shit, and it really pissed me off."

Last month, Citi renamed its DEI talent management team, streamlining and rebranding it as its "talent management and engagement" team, per a company memo. The embattled bank said it would move away from "aspirational representation goals except as required by law."

The financial-services powerhouse Goldman Sachs tamped down on diversity-related language in its 2024 annual report, published in late February; and also terminated a policy that required clients taking their companies public to count at least two diverse individuals on their boards.

"We have made certain adjustments to reflect developments in the law in the US," David Solomon, the CEO of the investment bank, said at the time in a statement tied to Goldman's shift.

See the full memo from Jennifer Piepszak on JPMorgan's move to rename DEI programs:

Dear colleagues,

At JPMorganChase, we're here to serve customers and clients across the U.S. and around the world. We help individuals launch their careers, assist families as they purchase their forever homes, teach financial health and wealth-building skills, power businesses and economies, and so much more. Our efforts to maximize value for investors and uplift the people and communities we serve drive our passion and dedication — and make us a stronger, more successful company.

We regularly review all of our products and services to be effective and efficient and to keep up with the market, consumer demand and current laws and regulations as they evolve, and we're doing the same regarding our diversity efforts, where we're making some changes to our programs and the language we use to describe them.

Specifically:

• We are changing "equity" to "opportunity" and renaming our organization to Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion (DOI) because the "e" always meant equal opportunity to us, not equal outcomes, and we believe this more accurately reflects our ongoing approach to reach the most customers and clients to grow our business, create an inclusive workplace for our employees and increase access to opportunities. The DOI organization will continue to report to Thelma Ferguson.

• We've already streamlined our diversity programs that were managed centrally by the DOI organization which meant some programs that formerly sat in DOI are now integrated into the lines of business, Human Resources or Corporate Responsibility.
• Our employee groups will continue to focus on engagement, cultural celebrations, education and historical observances, and be available for all. We're increasing connectivity between Councils, Executive Forums, Business Resource Groups, and the Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion organization to ensure consistent operating principles and maximum impact. This means some activities, councils or chapters may be consolidated to streamline our process and engagement strategy.
• Additionally, we plan to reduce trainings while maintaining a focus on high quality offerings.

We will continuously evaluate programs across every part of our business to make sure they make commercial sense and are driving the right business outcomes. We must constantly raise the bar on how we deliver impact if we're to remain a strong business and employer of choice. And we will continue to comply with all laws and regulations.

We remain committed to our core principles, which includes our belief in the power of a diverse workforce that strengthens our business and attracts and retains the best talent. We work to reduce barriers, not standards, because we know that when you reduce standards, nobody wins.

We've always been committed to hiring, compensation and promotion that are merit-based; we do not have illegal quotas or pay incentives, and we would never turn someone away because of their political or religious beliefs, or because of who they are. We're not perfect, but we take pride in constantly challenging ourselves and raising the bar, and we always welcome feedback on ways we can be better.

Our outstanding business results reflect the quality of our employees and the success of our customer and community outreach. We're proud of how we continue to deliver excellence with integrity, heart and courage for our employees, shareholders, clients, customers and communities.

Emmalyse Brownstein is a reporter at Business Insider, and can be reached via SMS/the encrypted app Signal at 305-857-5516, or email at [email protected]. Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider who can be reached at SMS/the encrypted app Signal (561) 257-5758, or [email protected].

• JPMorgan Chase told workers of its Columbus, Ohio, campus to prepare to return full-time April 21.
• The memo noted there will be additional parking, a new shuttle service, and upgraded dining options.
• Not everyone is enthusiastic about the changes, and three employees told Business Insider why.

Employees of JPMorgan's largest US campus received their return-to-office marching orders this week in a memo that also outlined the bank's plans for addressing a lack of key amenities, like food and parking.

The bank told workers of its Polaris campus in Columbus, Ohio — a tech hub that houses roughly 12,000 employees — to return to the office five days a week beginning April 21, according to an internal memo viewed by BI.

"We're focused on making your full-time return to office as smooth as possible," read the memo, which was sent to employees of the Polaris office on Monday.

"To ensure everyone can find parking, an offsite parking lot, located nearby, will offer free and ADA compliant, shuttle service, ensuring convenient and accessible transportation to and from the office throughout the day," the memo said. The bank also promised "upgraded" dining options.

Polaris employees who spoke to BI, however, said they were unimpressed with some of the solutions offered in the Monday memo, including the off-site parking.

"The last thing that I want to do after a full day of work is stand with a group of my coworkers, hope there is enough room on the next bus, ride for 10 minutes to my car parked at the mall, and then drive home," said a product manager who commutes about 30 minutes one-way to Polaris. He said he'll try to get to the office early to avoid the hassle.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon in January called the bank's hybrid workers, who made up less than 30% of its total headcount, back to the office five days a week starting in March. The RTO deadline for employees of the Columbus office, however, was delayed to give the bank time to get it ready.

"Our teams have been working hard to ensure our sites have the capacity and amenities employees will need to return to the office full-time," a spokesperson told BI, adding, "We have about 12,000 employees working in Polaris. We would not have asked employees to return if we did not have the capacity to accommodate them."

Polaris, which houses many of the bank's tech workers and is key to several of its cloud-focused initiatives, was built to accommodate some 12,000 workers. According to internal documents about the property reviewed by Business Insider, the site is home to 13,601 employees with a total seating capacity of 11,930.

The JPMorgan spokesperson, however, said that the 13,000 number includes "engineers, service staff, security guards, and other folks who aren't in the building daily."

Still, employees have complained about what they perceive as a lack of desks, parking, or conference rooms, including in employee group chats. In one recent chat, employees discussed a document that appeared to outline how the bank might enforce its RTO mandate, as BI reported last week.

Food upgrades

In addition to parking, the memo also promised of upgraded dining options, such as a "new chef's table option," "more guest restaurants in the atrium," as well as "an exciting new on-campus dining option" coming later this fall.

Two other Polaris-based employees told BI that having more on-site dining choices will be key to ensuring a smooth return now that workers won't want to give up coveted parking spots or take the shuttle to and from their cars. They noted that one of the two cafeterias at Polaris has been closed for years.

"Leaving for lunch will no longer be an option," one software developer told BI.

Still, one expressed concern that even with more on-campus dining options, five days RTO will eat into their productivity.

"The complaint that we have really is that everybody's lunch is 12 to 1," said a different tech worker. "Trying to go to lunch at that time means you're in a line forever."

The Polaris campus is among JPMorgan's largest at 2 million square feet. It was renovated in 2023 with state-of-the-art technology, including lights that automatically dim in the daytime and water-saving faucets and flushers, according to a JPM press release post-renovation. It is also the site of a leaked town hall with Jamie Dimon in February over the bank's return-to-office mandate.

Polaris workers told BI they are also bracing for a potentially messy desk situation.

"It's all open seating with no walls between you and the people sitting around you, who may not even work in your department," said the product manager. "Everyone is on their own Zoom calls, which can be distracting if you are trying to put your head down and get work done," he added.

Workers who don't snag a desk are being told to "just log in using their own device in the atrium or conference center," the software engineer said, adding, "they are so not prepared for this."

Have a tip? Contact Emmalyse Brownstein via email at [email protected] or Signal at 305-857-5516. Contact Bianca Chan via email at [email protected] or Signal at 646-376-6038. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Bank of America is reinventing the role of the investment banking "staffer."
• Staffers are traditionally midlevel employees tasked with doling out jobs to junior bankers.
• BofA is elevating the role by making it permanent and giving it to higher ranking staff.

Bank of America is shaking up a long-standing investment banking tradition in its latest effort to prevent young bankers from burnout, Business Insider has learned.

On Wall Street, the job of doling out tasks to entry-level bankers has traditionally rested with a handful of midlevel bankers widely referred to as "staffers." A criticism of the staffer role is that the midlevel bankers assigned to the job have little incentive or power to protect young bankers who might be overworked.

Bank of America is now giving the responsibility for junior banker workloads exclusively to members of its highest ranks: directors and above, according to a person with knowledge of the switch. The role will also be permanent. (Traditionally, the staffer role is filled by senior associates or vice presidents on a rotating basis.)

"The change here is that they will focus solely on this job," the person said, adding: "These are senior bankers with strong leadership skills who either have raised their hands or have been tapped."

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the change on Monday. It comes less than a year after a Bank of America associate died following his team's closing of a $2 billion deal, igniting a series of initatives geared toward protecting junior bankers from overwork.

At Bank of America, "staffers" are given the title CRO for chief resource officer, this person said.

In the past, bankers were designated to the CRO role temporarily — handling staffing for managing directors in need of a team to close a deal. By making the role permanent and filling it with senior leaders, the hope is that the incentive will shift from getting a deal done to building the next generation of talent, the BofA insider said.

"By working with these teams day in and day out, they'll have a better sense of leadership, strengths, work assignments, and developmental opportunities — how do you get this person to the next level?" this person said.

The new CROs will be under the leadership of Andrew Karp, a Bank of America veteran who will retain his role as head of sustainable banking solutions, according to the person familiar.

In May, Bank of America associate Leo Lukenas died of what was determined to be acute coronary artery thrombus, which causes blood to clot in the heart. His death sparked a series of reports about 100-plus hour workweeks by current and former BofA bankers, as well as concerns, first reported by BI, about the bank's tool for flagging excessive work hours.

Bank of America in September said it would implement a new time-tracking tool. Around the same time, JPMorgan promised to cap hours at 80 per week, unless bankers were on live deals, and created a new junior banker protector role.

• Employees are waiting to hear how JPMorgan Chase will enforce its return-to-office mandate.
• They're searching for clues, in one instance sharing a leaked document in a group chat.
• Employees also shared info about location and productivity tracking tools.

In a private group chat formed after JPMorgan's January announcement that all employees would be called back to the office full-time, a few hundred people have turned to the forum to air their concerns, vent about the changes, and share tidbits of intel from their respective corners of the bank in a bid to understand the bank's plans.

The "extremely active" chat gets upward of 100 messages a day, according to one member, a JPMorgan employee of 8 years, who talked to Business Insider. It is one of many Signal chats and Reddit threads that JPMorgan employees are turning to as unofficial "support groups" for employees.

"There's a depressingly small amount of official information within JPMC," they said, expressing their concern about the lack of emails about what's happening. "We have to go find the information, it is not being broadcast."

Last week, a document with JPMorgan branding was shared with the group and caused an instant hubbub, a different member of the chat told BI, which viewed the contents. It appeared to be an outline of steps of escalation for employees who don't meet RTO mandates, including a lower number of non-attendance warnings before possible termination for some.

BI was unable to verify the authenticity of the document or determine who dropped it in the encrypted chat. It is also unclear if it represents current or future bank policy. What is clear based on chat members' reactions to the 6-page outline is that JPMorgan Chase employees are hungry for any clues to how the bank will enforce its 5-days-in-office policy, which began rolling out March 3.

A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the document but said, "If employees are not meeting the expectations, there will be ramifications — just like any other performance issue."

Employees are also eager to understand how their attendance is monitored. Some worry that company tracking methods might not correctly record their hours or productivity — putting them at risk of potential enforcement. Others feel the RTO mandates and attendance recording measures are overkill. The employees were granted anonymity by BI to discuss internal company information without professional repercussions.

One JPMorgan tech VP told BI, sarcastically, that they thought the "babysitting was ending."

People in the aforementioned group chat have been sharing intel about tools for surveilling employee location and productivity. An employee who BI did not speak with shared that their manager had shown them a new tool with a heat map that shows how productive employees are based on the items worked on per hour. A technologist who has direct knowledge confirmed to BI the existence of a tool that tracked productivity per hour. It is unclear how widely it had been rolled out.

"It's impossible to put a number on productivity on a minute-by-minute basis," a software engineer in the group chat told BI. "So much of what we do is about communication, learning, planning, and investing. The only quantifiable measures take weeks to materialize."

JPMorgan said it has "no firmwide heat map that tracks individual production volumes."

"For several years now, we have had a transparent attendance tool that is available for all employees and managers to view and record their time, including vacation days, sick days, work from home, and travel," the bank spokesperson said.

The software engineer and the technologist both described color-coded calendars on manager dashboards that show employees' attendance, highlighting patterns such as requesting to work from home every Friday or calling in sick every Thursday. The chat-group document mentioned such patterns as grounds for managers to open HR cases against workers.

JPMorgan also has a long-standing tracking tool, Workplace Activity Data Utility, also known internally as WADU. While these types of surveilling mechanisms aren't new at JPMorgan, as BI has previously reported, they add tension to an already fraught situation around the return to office.

JPMorgan's RTO roll-out has been met with praise, disdain, and confusion. Bank employees said some offices didn't have enough desks, parking, or conference rooms, and that the messaging felt rushed and unplanned. In its memo announcing the mandate, the bank acknowledged that capacity restraints would mean that some offices aren't yet ready, and are maintaining their hybrid in-office policies, working one or two days from home until further notice.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a February interview with CNBC that he's aware this strict policy could result in employees leaving the company and that he's fine with that attrition.

But not everyone who's unhappy about the 5-day RTO is considering leaving the company. Some employees are exploring the possibility of a union and are working with Communications Workers of America, an organization that led the effort of around two dozen Wells Fargo branches unionizing, as BI previously reported.

Have a tip? Contact Bianca Chan via email at [email protected] or Signal at 646-376-6038. Contact Emmalyse Brownstein via email at [email protected] or Signal at 305-857-5516. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• $23 billion hedge fund Balyasny has adoped a new approach to recruiting young talent.
• A stock contest serves as an early application pool for the firm's internship program.
• A former participant and two firm execs explain how to snag an invite and make a good impression.

When Sophia Guiter arrived in New York City last October, it was her first time in the Big Apple.

Despite the allure of Broadway, Times Square, and the city that never sleeps, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, college student had a bigger mission: making an impression on executives of the $23 billion asset manager Balyasny. She and two of her Marquette University classmates were set to compete in the firm's first-ever US stock pitching competition the next day.

Guiter's focus paid off: Her team placed third, and she scored an interview that led to an internship with Balyasny's proprietary research team, set to start this summer.

Balyasny, meanwhile, has now adopted the competition as a regular part of its recruiting pipeline. It held a second stock-picking contest at the end of February and plans to host two such competitions a year in the US from now on.

In addition to prize money awarded to the top three teams, the top two teams, plus other standout students, are granted hard-to-get interviews for Balyasny internships. For example, six out of 15 participants from the February contest were interviewed for Balyasny's 2026 internship program.

"It's basically an early application pool for us, and we would love to be able to fill a good amount of our summer internship class via the stock pitch competition," said Hannah Dinardo, the firm's head of campus recruiting.

Balyasny is just one of many "buy-side" firms ramping up campus recruitment — that is, getting talent in the door earlier through internships versus waiting until they've had job experience. In the past, hedge funds and private equity firms recruited almost exclusively from investment banks. But campus recruiting has become increasingly important to the sector, which has ballooned in size in recent years due to growing interest in their investments.

"Having a cohort of young talent — I don't want to say that it's inexpensive, but it's an earlier investment," explained Steve Schurr, a Balyasny portfolio manager who conceived of the stock-picking competition as a talent pipeline. Today, most of Schurr's 10-person team counts Balyasny as their first job out of college, he said.

Guiter, Schurr, and Dinardo sat down with Business Insider to give their advice on how college students interested in a finance career can get invited to the competition and make an impression on the asset manager's top execs once there.

Inside the competition

Here's how it works: Balyasny recruiters, including Dinardo, identify campus clubs with students they can invite to submit stock pitches, which act as applications to the competition. The firm prioritizes sophomores.

Pitches are reviewed blind, meaning the school names are withheld until the final selection round. Then, five schools are invited to and hosted in New York to participate in an in-person competition.

At the event, student teams present their pitches to the judges — who are also portfolio managers — and the other teams for 10 minutes, followed by a seven-minute Q&A.

In addition to traditional Wall Street target schools, Dinardo says the firm also aims to include lesser-known universities like Marquette University — a small private school in Wisconsin. (The winners of the February competition hailed from The University of Alabama.)

"It's such a great way to evaluate students' skill set through their work product and to really see how they're thinking about markets, how they're thinking about stocks, and just see them in a totally different light versus just a one-to-one interview," said Dinardo. "You're able to also, from a recruiting perspective, see how they stack up against their peers."

Get strategically involved on campus

Key to scoring an invite is being in the right college clubs.

"The competition as a whole has been really helpful for us to better understand where we're spending our time on campus and which groups really align well with what we're looking for," Dinardo said.

She advises students whose groups aren't yet on their radar to hone in the club's educational program and mission.

"Think about the curriculum of the club. Is it a group where students by their sophomore year are going to be prepared to compete and participate in a competition like this?" she said, adding: "Are they well versed in diligencing an idea soup to nuts and from start to finish being able to build out a stock pitch and an investment pitch?"

In choosing which clubs to work with, Dinardo also looks at a club's relationship with its members, preferring a loyal base versus a handful of students aiming to fill out their resumes.

"A one-semester engagement opportunity on campus to build out your resume and get on an email distro list. I would say that's typically what we try to avoid," she said.

Put in the hours

It can be hard to juggle classes, jobs, friends, and other club commitments, but Guiter advises students prioritize the stock-picking competition if they want to succeed.

"We were putting in over 80 hours a week, especially that last week," Guiter said. I mean, we'd wake up in the morning and we would work on that until we went to bed. We were really focused on it and really wanted to stand out to the judges and come as prepared as possible."

She had never worked so hard on anything in her time as a student.

"It was definitely the most I've ever juggled on my plate at one time, but worth every minute of it."

Practice getting 'grilled'

Rehearse presenting your ideas and answering questions as much and as often as possible.

"Don't show up and have only practiced your pitch like, three times," Guiter said.

She and her team did multiple run-throughs in front of their entire investment club and professors.

"We'd go up during class or have Friday pitches where people would come, and they would just grill us," she said. "There was a time where it went on for an hour and a half."

Ahead of the competition, the top five teams get a 45-minute pitch revision session with members of Balyasny's analyst development team to prepare for the final event and get a better sense of the types of questions they might be probed on.

Think of ways to be different

Balyasny doesn't give students tight parameters for picking a stock, just a market cap amount. So when thinking about which equity they'd showcase, Guiter and her team went for something they thought would be a less popular choice: a healthcare stock.

"We wanted to branch out from the tech and AI space because we figured a lot of our competitors would choose a stock within that space," she said. "We wanted to differentiate within a market that has a lot of research that we could build off of."

Indeed, the skill set required to be a successful equity investor is "evolving rapidly," said Schurr.

"You need to have a high degree of creative intelligence. You need to be a really independent thinker, but you also have to have an adaptive mindset," he said.

Guiter and her team used ChatGPT to assist with the extensive research project and show they could harness technology.

"We analyzed how often management fulfilled their promises by analyzing 10 years of earning calls," she said.

Focus on process

Looking back, Guiter said her group should've included more details about the time spent on the project as well as their research approach when delivering their 10-minute pitch. It's something she now encourages other students to do.

Indeed, Shurr (who was a judge at her competition) said he is looking to hear about research processes and conclusions that say something interesting. Even if the judges don't agree with the stock call, this will give them insight into the process.

Schurr added that successful teams "did a deep amount of interesting and variant work and could articulate their thoughts quite well about the nature of the business and where they believe the perception was misplaced," he said. "And they could show their work."

This focus helps him and other PMs determine the competition winners and identify which students to invite to Super Days.

"Really what you're trying to do with this is not identify one great idea, you're trying to identify someone who has an innate strength as a sleuth to go and dig for information in a unique way," he said.

CORRECTION: March 12, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the timing of Guiter's internship and the amount of the prize money.

• Recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners surveyed over 900 bankers, from boutiques to bulge brackets.
• BI obtained some of the results, including how much bankers in varying groups and levels made.
• See which titles and coverage areas saw the biggest pay bumps in 2024 as dealmaking rebounded.

Psst! How much was your bonus?

On Wall Street, your end-of-year paycheck can often indicate your standing at work. Yet, knowing where your bonus pay ranks compared to peers is not so simple.

In an effort to shed some light on Wall Street pay trends, recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners surveyed more than 900 investment bankers about their 2024 salaries and bonuses.

The survey was conducted between December 1, 2024 and February 28, 2025 using Prospect Rock's banking industry contacts. It's the third year Meridith Dennes, the firm's managing partner, has conducted it.

"It's always been so cryptic," Dennes told Business Insider about the Wall Street compensation structure. "The whole point of the survey is that compensation is much more nuanced than what people talk about."

Survey respondents included bankers from all ranks, from analysts up to vice presidents and managing directors, and across a multitude of coverage groups, and firms.

Prospect Rock Partners gave BI permission to publish select slides from its full survey. The results shared here suggest that so-called elite boutique banks (think Evercore, Lazard, and Centerview) saw total compensation increases of between 11% to 68% across all roles. Total pay for associates at elite boutiques rose an average of 31% for first-year associates and 33% for second-year associates. Managing director compensation at elite boutiques jumped from about $1 million in 2023 to over $1.7 million in 2024, an increase of 68%.

These bonus insights come as Wall Street waits with bated breath to see whether the M&A rebound many industry experts predicted for 2025 will fully materialize or fizzle out.

"There's so much uncertainty — geopolitical risk, the impact on the private sector of DOGE cuts, tariffs, and the interest rate environment — which can cause a lot of turmoil in the market," Dennes said.

The investment banking hiring surge that started at the end of 2024 continues, however, Dennes said.

"I, as a recruiter, am seeing an increase in job requisitions coming in, but it's much harder to find talent than what people want," she said. "More companies who haven't used recruiters in the last two years are coming out of the woodwork now."

2024 compensation overview

This portion of the survey gives the average 2024 compensation for survey respondents at all investment banking levels.

The most junior employees — first-year analysts — averaged a base pay of more than $110,000. The data also suggests that most analysts earned a bonus that equaled about 50% of their base pay in 2024.

Higher-level bankers —  vice presidents and up — generally earned bonuses equal to or higher than their base pay. The biggest gains went to group heads, who are usually managing directors and partners. They saw average bonuses of more than $1.7 million.

What bulge-brackets are paying associates

Bulge-bracket firms are the largest banks, which tend to handle the biggest deals and, therefore, have the largest investment banking teams. These firms tend to include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup.

Associates are the second-most junior rank at an investment bank after analysts. This chart shows that associate-level survey respondents who work at bulge brackets earned between $176,000 and $221,000 in base pay for 2024. They reported higher bonuses in 2024 over 2023.

What middle-market banks are paying associates

Middle-market bankers tend to focus on smaller clients, often those with annual revenue of under $1 billion. This cohort included banks like William Blair, Piper Sandler, Oppenheimer, and Baird, Dennes said.

The average 2024 base pay for associate bankers at these firms was lower than at bulge brackets — but not by very much. The average 2024 bonus for each position was even more for this cohort than for survey respondents who work at bulge brackets.

What 'elite boutiques' are paying associates

Associate-level bankers who work at "elite boutiques" take the cake for the highest average 2024 base pay and bonus, reporting higher numbers than their peers at bulge brackets and middle-market firms.

Elite boutiques are considered the top-tier boutique banks that can compete with the big firms. In 2024, Evercore, Centerview, and Lazard, for example, snagged top 10 positions on the league tables for both global and US M&A advice, according to M&A tracker LSEG.

Survey respondents from this group work at firms like Evercore, Centerview, Lazard, PJT Partners, and Moelis.

More details on 'elite boutique' pay

These banks tend to focus solely on investment banking versus larger firms, which may have consumer banking and asset management services. Some boutiques also focus on deals within a specific sector, like media, telecom, or healthcare.

That means they often have stronger execution abilities, said Dennes, and therefore higher fee income per banker on their leaner teams.

"One of the most significant findings is the clear correlation between increased compensation in 2024 and recovering deal volumes," she wrote in an overview section of the survey's findings. "This recovery appears most pronounced at elite boutiques, where compensation is directly tied to deal performance and revenue generation."

Pay by industry group in 2023 & 2024

Second-year associates, whose 2024 comp is described in this section of the survey results, are bankers who have been in the field for anywhere from two to five years, depending on whether they started in investment banking as an analyst or were hired out of an MBA program.

The largest group of respondents in this group described themselves as as M&A generalists. The survey says this cohort averaged $187,000 in base pay and about $134,000 in bonus last year.

Others well-paid associates in this group worked in business services, restructuring, and DCM.

Some overall comp is down from years ago

The report shows how average comp has changed since 2022. In some cases, it wasn't for the better, like for vice presidents and managing directors.

For context, global dealmaking hit more than $3.16 trillion in 2024, which is up 10% over 2023, but still lower than 2022 volumes of $3.45 trillion, according to deals tracker LSEG.

• JPMorgan Chase has spent billions to become a technology-driven bank.
• Now, due to the bank's RTO stance, some of its tech workers are considering leaving.
• Recruiters and insiders lay out how its policy could spell trouble for retaining its top tech talent.

Anthony has never been interested in attending town halls, but when texts started rolling in about his top boss' remote work diatribe, it was too much for the technology vice president to ignore.

An IT employee named Nicolas Welch had questioned JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon while he was visiting an office in Columbus, Ohio, about leaving some return-to-office decisions up to managers. Dimon launched into an expletive-laced response, in which he complained about employees not paying attention on Zoom and that there's "not a goddamn person" he could get a hold of on Fridays.

The audio of the exchange went viral. It also struck a nerve, and now some employees are considering leaving, teaming up to influence work policy, or, like Anthony, entertaining job offers from rival banks.

"Jamie Dimon's like, 'Well, hey, if you don't like it, you know where the door is.' Yes, we do," said Anthony, which is a pseudonym to protect his identity since he was not authorized to speak about internal matters. "And that's going to impact him. He's going to lose some good people."

JPMorgan has long prided itself on being a tech-driven bank, with a $17 billion IT budget and nearly 60,000 technology workers. To stay ahead of its rivals and keep clients engaged, it funds research and development across cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and crypto.

Business Insider spoke with two recruiters and five JPMorgan employees, four of whom requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs, who said the bank's unpopular RTO mandate could spell trouble for the bank's ability to retain and attract tech talent. Dimon has espoused the merits of in-person collaboration, but support for the RTO plan was scarce among those interviewed by BI.

As the March 3 expiration date for hybrid work approaches, Dimon has said he's aware that his hardline stance could push some employees away and is fine with that attrition.

"I completely respect people that don't want to go to the office all five days a week. That's your right. It's my right. It's a citizen's right," Dimon said in a CNBC interview Monday. "But they should respect that the company is going to decide what's good for the clients, the company, etc., not an individual."

While 70% of the bank's 317,233 employees are already in the office five days a week, technology workers are part of the contingent still working one or two days at home.

The battle for technical talent — which tends to be industry-agnostic — was long fought using perks, with companies providing lavish extras like fancy food, massages, and even paid family planning services to keep workers happy and attract new ones. With many of those falling away as companies focus on cost cutting, recruiters say hybrid work is emerging as the strongest benefit a company can offer.

Ryan Mazza, who runs the New York office of the financial-talent search firm Selby Jennings, said he had "no doubt" that there would be talent attrition among companies that impose a five-day RTO. "There will certainly be a competitive disadvantage for those companies," he said.

Companies with flexible working policies have quickly distinguished themselves from the wave of their competitors pulling employees back to the office. Spotify plastered its message on a Times Square billboard in early January, saying its employees aren't children and it was sticking with remote work. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser maintained her pledge to hybrid work this month, as did the fintech Revolut.

Welch, the tech operations analyst who triggered Dimon's testy comments, said the town hall roused employees rather than quieted them. The RTO decision has pushed some workers to explore the possibility of a union and organizing a unified response.

"People are absolutely emboldened. I don't know fully what that means yet," he said.

JPMorgan declined requests for comment.

Tech behemoth of Wall Street

JPMorgan's technology footprint is massive by a few measures. The bank employs about 44,000 software engineers globally who run more than 6,000 applications and manage about an exabyte (1 billion gigabytes) of data. That engine of people, systems, and data has helped the bank bring in record financial results, with its net income rising to $59 billion for 2024.

The bank also has big AI ambitions, with Dimon saying he has no intention of losing the AI arms race to disruptors. It has created a robust AI research department led by a former Carnegie Mellon researcher, Manuela Veloso, and has earned the top spot on the Evident AI Index, an independent benchmark for AI adoption and performance in finance.

Mike Mayo, a Wells Fargo analyst who regularly grills Dimon on earnings calls, last year called JPMorgan the "Nvidia of banking," commenting on its tech spend outpacing that of any other bank.

Reputation and prestige only go so far, said Deepali Vyas, the global head of the data, AI, and fintech practice at the headhunting firm Korn Ferry. She said she'd seen other companies fail to hire cloud, data, and AI talent purely because of their return-to-office policies.

"The challenge for banks is that top tech talent has options," Vyas said, adding: "If firms insist on a rigid in-office structure without a compelling trade-off, they risk losing talent to more agile, innovation-friendly environments." Vyas added that she knew of a very senior-level managing director within JPMorgan's corporate and investment bank who told her they're considering quitting because of the return to office.

A JPMorgan executive director overseeing data scientists and data engineers, a key hiring area for the bank and its AI ambitions, said he's worried about losing talent to the in-office order.

"Taking away a hybrid schedule, I honestly think, shrinks our talent pool even more," the executive director said. "I wonder how many people were already on the fence in comparison to other opportunities but now said, 'Forget this. I don't want to be forced into an office.'"

While JPMorgan made headlines with its return-to-office policy, remote work has steadily tightened across corporate America. Wall Street bosses such as Goldman Sachs' David Solomon and Citadel's Ken Griffin pulled workers back to the office in 2021. Big Tech companies, including Amazon, Dell, and AT&T, have more recently piled into the effort.

Selby Jennings' Mazza said he's already seeing pay demands increase for finance-sector jobs over the industry's return to office. Tech workers who are considering these jobs are demanding $5,000 or $10,000 in added pay to cover childcare or offset commuting costs, he said.

While some JPMorgan employees, including Anthony, are already in talks with prospective new employers, recruiters said they didn't see a mass exodus of talent coming overnight as today's tech job market favors employers.

Down the line, though, the bank's RTO demands and execution could come back to bite it.

"Once that turns, even if the pendulum starts swinging just a little bit the other way, and this includes JPMorgan and all those other guys," Korn Ferry's Vyas said, referring to Amazon, Dell, and Salesforce, among others, the top performers "will be the first people that leave for that benefit."

'Rushed and unplanned'

Questioning one of the most powerful people on Wall Street has raised Welch's profile within JPMorgan. Welch, who supports network equipment inside Chase branches, joked he's going to have to buy a wrist brace for the number of high-fives he gets walking down the hall. A stranger even gave him a mockingjay pin, a nod to the dystopian "Hunger Games" movie series wherein the pin becomes a symbol of rebellion.

A story about Welch getting fired before the move was rescinded, reported by Fortune, has caught the attention of other employers. He said he'd received multiple job offers in the past week. It's a moot point: "Why would I want to work somewhere else? Chase is the best," he said.

But Welch, who works three days a week out of JPMorgan's Polaris campus in Columbus, is still a critic of the firm's plans. One reason is that he advocates for a hybrid schedule for employees like himself who help care for family members.

"I live with my mom. She is 68. She can't reach the top shelf," Welch said. "She needs help with stuff, and I'm here to do that, you know? I can turn around and go do a thing and come back to work. Why wouldn't I want to do that?"

Home to more than 19,000 employees across 13 buildings, Polaris also boasts the fourth-highest-grossing Starbucks. The campus has been key to several tech initiatives, like overhauling its deposit system on the public cloud and developing edge cloud computing for faster data analysis.

Employees BI talked to said that offices didn't have enough desks, parking, or conference rooms and that office cafés wouldn't be ready for the increased RTO traffic.

In the January memo about the call back to the office, the bank's operating committee acknowledged that not all office locations would be ready for the March 3 deadline and said more information would be shared by the end of the month. The committee added that some offices had capacity restraints and timelines for those would become available on a location-by-location basis.

But as of late February, many workers said they were still waiting for an update. For example, Polaris-based staff have yet to be told when they'll be called into the office.

The "messaging feels rushed and unplanned," the data executive director said.

Meanwhile, one analyst whose office permanently closed during the pandemic and was designated a fully remote worker has been left in the lurch about whether they'll have a job in March.

"I've only been told that it's business as usual until I'm told otherwise. I was, however, advised by my manager as a friend to consider putting feelers out for new roles elsewhere," the analyst said.

Despite these uncertainties, many have been given their marching orders, and some question: What's the point?

"Just because you bring people back into the office doesn't mean you're not going to have Zoom calls," a software manager in Ohio said. "The whole collaboration thing is utter bullshit in my mind because I'm still going to be getting on Zoom calls. The only difference is, two of the people I'm on Zoom calls with might be sitting right beside me," the technologist, who works with people in Texas and Singapore, said.

Putting gasoline on a fire

The aftermath of the RTO rollout has stoked a fire within some JPMorgan employees to unionize.

"They anticipated this was coming," Nick Weiner told BI about JPMorgan employees' RTO expectations. Weiner is a senior campaign lead for Communications Workers of America who has led the effort of some 25 Wells Fargo branches in unionizing. He told BI that he had been in touch with JPMorgan workers for a similar effort.

"The way he did it helped to really put gasoline on this fire," Weiner said of Dimon's town hall comments. Dimon has since said that he shouldn't have sworn.

A petition against the in-office policy has garnered more than 1,700 signatures, and an internal Signal group counts about 200 members. Dimon said in the town hall he didn't care about how many people signed the petition, but that hasn't deterred workers.

Welch participated in a meeting last week with other JPMorgan employees to learn more about the basics of the unionizing process, not because he dislikes his employer — "even after cussing at me, I arguably have more respect for him," Welch said of Dimon — but because he loves it.

"A union is such a difficult thing to kind of even get going, but we love our jobs so much just in general that we're going to do that," Welch said. "We want to be heard. And these draconic orders are so unlike what we've worked in. It's so unlike what we've dealt with."

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• Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency probationary employees were fired on Friday.
• But some staff at the EPA were told Wednesday they were fired by accident.
• Similar scenes are reported to have played out at several other federal agencies.

On Friday, hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency staff were notified by email that they were being terminated.

Five days later, the EPA emailed some of them to say they weren't being fired after all.

"This is to provide notification that the Agency is rescinding your termination. You are not being removed from EPA or from federal civil service at this time," read the email, which was seen by Business Insider.

The unsigned email apologized "for this inconvenience" and thanked employees for their service. It also informed them that if they had already turned in EPA equipment such as laptops and badges, their supervisors would help them get those items back.

It's not clear how many employees had their firings rescinded. BI spoke with three. All requested anonymity out of fear of professional reprisal, but their identities are known to BI.

One agency employee whose termination was rescinded, a water-quality inspector, said that working for the EPA was her "dream job" and that she hoped she could go right back to working on the cases she was working on last week.

Another said she wasn't even sure whether she wanted to go back.

"I'm more on the angry side of grief now," the second employee said. "It's just ridiculous."

The second employee told BI they were in a group chat with about two dozen other employees, and "10 or 15" had been told their terminations were rescinded.

Two employees said at least some of the people who had their firings reversed had been hired through the EPA's "Pathways" program for recent college graduates.

On Friday, an EPA spokesperson confirmed to BI it had terminated 388 probationary employees. According to information on doge.gov, about 1,579 EPA employees have less than a year of tenure, about 9.6% of the agency's workforce.

Federal employees typically serve a one-year probationary period when first hired, during which they can be more easily terminated than permanent staff.

Media representatives for the EPA and the White House didn't respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Rescinding termination orders appears to be happening across the federal government.

As BI previously reported, some probationary staff at the Small Business Administration were told they were terminated, then not terminated, and then officially terminated over the course of five days.

The publication Government Executive reported that terminations had been rescinded for workers in the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture, which is dealing with a massive bird flu outbreak. The outlet reported that at least one Small Business Administration worker was fired twice with the agency backtracking both times.

The federal government fired thousands of probationary workers starting last week, and more layoffs are expected this week as well.

• An audio recording of Jamie Dimon's WFH tirade at a JPM town hall has gone viral.
• Business Insider obtained a copy of last week's recording out of Columbus, Ohio.
• Here's more of what he said at the wide-ranging meeting, from AI to the CFPB.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has become a TikTok sensation over his comments slamming work-from-home at a recent town hall with employees.

However, audio recordings of the meeting suggest that remote work was just a sliver of the conversation. Dimon also fielded questions from employees and addressed a wide range of issues, from whether AI will replace their jobs to what his request for improved "efficiencies" means for their work-life balance, according to copies of the tape obtained by Business Insider. At one point, he encourages employees to welcome job-stealing AI, saying, "Attrition is your friend."

A TikTok video of Dimon's comments, posted by financial publication Barron's, has garnered 2.4 million views, thanks in part to his colorful and direct explanation for why the bank is calling all employees back to the office five days a week starting in March.

"And don't give me this shit that work-from-home-Friday works," Dimon told the crowd, according to the recording, which BI attained a copy of. "I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there's not a goddamn person you can get a hold of."

Dimon made the comments at a town hall in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, following the opening of a nearby branch with a community center. JPMorgan has a large presence in Ohio, including a headquarters that housed some 12,000 employees when it reopened following renovations in 2023, according to a press release. At the time, the firm called the building "the firm's largest" office space.

Here is some of what he said, including his thoughts on President Trump's dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and his advice to young people. The comments are edited in places for length and clarity.

How improved efficiency affects JPM workers

At one point in the meeting, Dimon addresses his push for a more efficient workplace and what it might mean for workers' work-life balance.

"We could be far more efficient and we should always be thinking that way. That's not to torture our people. I want you to have a great life, I don't want you to overwork," he said. "But I think reducing bureaucracy literally will reduce cancer. I think dealing with the demoralizing effect of bureaucracy — you lose people, it gets you sick, and I really do believe that, so — I could be wrong."

On AI taking jobs

Dimon responded to a question about AI by saying that he expects the technology could "eliminate" some jobs. He advised employees, however, to welcome the threat and figure out how to adjust. "Attrition is your friend," he said.

"You know, it'll change some of your jobs — for a lot of you it will be a copilot, for a lot of you it will take away the drudgery, and it may very well eliminate jobs, too. And for that, I don't wanna stick my head in the sand. But what I wanna do is say, 'hmm, let's get ahead of that.' And, you know, I would say, attrition is your friend, you know, if you have jobs it's gonna replace, you know, we could retrain and reskill and redeploy people. But let's learn to use it like any technology to the best we can for our clients."

On young people falling behind

At one point in the call, a software engineering intern asked about Jamie's past comment on young people falling behind, including the challenges they face and how he intends to help. He responded by reiterating the benefits of his return-to-office mandate.

"Yeah, no, I think the ones falling behind that the ones that are not here full time. [laughter] No, no, I'm being quite serious," he said. "It's the ones who aren't here that are meeting less people, learning less, being challenged, not being put on the same amount of teams because they're not here — you know, and that's what I'm talking about."

On Trump dismantling the CFPB

Dimon also addressed President Trump's efforts to shrink the CFPB, which was created in the aftermath of the financial crisis to protect consumers in the financial marketplace. The agency has collected some $19.7 billion in consumer relief through its enforcement actions, including some against JPMorgan.

Dimon said he thinks the CFPB has some benefits, but he applauded Trump's removal of director Rohit Chopra earlier this month and said he thinks the agency should be an arm of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

"The only thing good I'll say about the CFPB is there are consumer protective rules that are good. They should be put in place to protect consumers. Having said that, they were duplicative. The OCC already did it. The Fed does it. The FHA does it. So we get it," said Dimon. "They massively overstepped their authority. I think this guy — Chopra or whatever his name is — was just an arrogant, out-of-touch son of a bitch who just made things worse for a lot of Americans. So if they get rid of it or not makes no difference to me. It should exist, but it should be inside the OCC like it used to be, when it comes to banks."

Nonbank financial regulation

Dimon suggested the CFPB could be put to better use going after nonbank financial institutions.

"You may want a CFPB for nonbanks. Think of payday lenders and all these other things that are not regulated. But remember we're heavily regulated. But at least if it's inside a bank the regulators get to look at safety and soundness, what makes sense, what's fair, how products should be priced or not priced, you know, set best practices. But I assume they're gonna be very tough on the CFPB, and the CFPB has earned it."

On the bank's fintech failings

In response to a question about growth in 2025, Dimon reminded employees that the bank has to acknowledge competition and avoid complacency. As an example, he talked about his and the bank's failures when competing with fintech and even bulge-bracket banks like Bank of America.

"Don't say, well, we're the best in the world. Assume that they're doing something better. Even Bank America does something better than us. Shocking, I know, but. [laughter] It's the digital world. They were ahead of us in digital. How the hell — I don't know. But it's your job to catch up now. And so, but, there are other things that we could have done like a Stripe or stuff like that, but we didn't have the imagination, including me, to say, hmm, we have the best payments, but we should add data and make it easier for the client. What does the client really want? It wasn't the payment they wanted. They wanted to close the sale faster and more certainly."

Do you work for JPMorgan? Reach this reporter at [email protected] or, for sensitive messages, on the encrypted app Signal at 305-857-5516.

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon lashed out at WFH in a now-viral audio recording.
• The remarks are drawing WFH defenders but also fans of RTO.
• Billionaire Bill Ackman applauded the remarks on X as "a must listen."

An audio recording of Jamie Dimon slamming remote work is going viral, and work-from-home supporters and naysayers alike are sounding off.

On Elon Musk's social media platform X, some users applauded the JPMorgan Chase CEO's defense of the bank's 5-day RTO requirement, which was first posted online by financial news publication Barrons.

"I'm with Jamie," Quentin Kasseh, CEO of data and AI company Syntaxia, posted on X, adding that "no breakthrough like the Manhattan Project is built on Zoom calls."

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman also cheered Dimon on. "He is entirely right," Ackman posted on X, adding: "We can all learn from him. A must listen."

The audio recording, which Business Insider obtained and confirmed, has amassed 1.7 million views and counting on TikTok alone. In it, Dimon uses multiple expletives and anecdotes, some drawing laughter, to explain to staffers in the room why remote work is a detriment to his company.

"A lot of you were on the fucking Zoom and you were doing the following," Dimon said in the recording, "looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an asshole the other person is, not paying attention, not reading your stuff."

He made clear he wouldn't be flexible with the bank's COVID-era hybrid-work policy that is scheduled to end in March.

"And don't give me this shit that work-from-home-Friday works," Dimon said. "I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there's not a goddamn person you can get a hold of."

As Business Insider reported in January, JPMorgan has called all its workers back to the office five days a week starting in March. The return-to-office mandate affects less than 30% of the bank's employees, mostly back-office workers, including tech staffers.

Some viewers of the video used it as an opportunity to defend remote work.

"WFH is SO much better," one TikTok user said. "I can type notes while in a meeting. I have more energy from not commuting, and I'm more productive overall."

"Newsflash, we do those things in the office as well," said another TikTok user.

Some people suggested that the real problem is an endless stream of pointless work meetings.

"The damn unnecessary meeting is the epitome of inefficiency," one TikTok user said. "Can't stand the 7 hours of meetings that turn an 8-hour day into 12 cause nothing getting done during those meetings."

Do you work for JPMorgan? Reach this reporter at [email protected] or, for sensitive messages, on the encrypted app Signal at 305-857-5516.