JP Morgan has created an international role to oversee the “wellbeing and success” of junior bankers after renewed concerns over the health and safety of overworked staff across the industry.
Ryland McClendon, its head of diversity and inclusion, has been appointed as the bank’s first “global investment banking associate and analyst leader”, referring to its most junior ranking staff.
“In this role, Ryland will be responsible for leading our associates and analysts globally. She will help to support their wellbeing and success, as well as equip and enable them to deliver for our business, clients and each other,” the bank said in an internal memo seen by the Guardian, and first reported by CNBC.
McClendon will be based in New York but is expected to travel to JP Morgan’s other global hubs, including London, as part of the role. One of her first tasks will involve assessing how the bank will police a new internal policy meant to cap juniors’ working schedules to 80 hours a week. The cap has been communicated to investment banking teams but has yet to be formally announced.
JP Morgan – which employs 330,000 staff across the world, 22,000 of whom are in the UK – also plans to hire more junior bankers to lighten the load on staff.
It is part of wider efforts to tackle Wall Street banks’ reputation for gruelling working hours that have proven fatal for some staff.
The industry’s high-pressure culture has long been a concern but faced further scrutiny in 2013 after a 21-year-old Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern was found dead in a shower at his London flat. He had worked for 72 hours in a row and died of an epileptic seizure . Two years later, a 22-year-old Goldman Sachs analyst took his own life after complaining of toiling 100 hours a week and throughout the night.
In the middle of the Covid pandemic, the sector was also forced to do some soul searching after a leaked presentation by 13 aggrieved first-year Goldman Sachs bankers outlined how their 100-hour working weeks and abuse from colleagues had created “inhumane” working conditions for new hires.
It prompted some banks to issue one-time bonuses of up to $20,000, as well as Peloton bikes and sympathy snack hampers, and promises to strengthen no-work-on-Saturday rules.
But this year Bank of America lost two junior bankers in a matter of weeks. A 25-year-old trader from its London office collapsed on a football pitch in May, while earlier that month an associate in New York, who reportedly said he was working more than 100 hours a week, died from a blood clot.
Social media was set alight by the tragedies, with users concerned that there was little bankers could do other than quit their jobs or leave the industry entirely.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
