Young Bankers Confused By Having Free Time As 2022 Wall Street Dealmaking Pales In Comparison To 2020 Peak

We’ve written extensively about how junior bankers have been coddled over the last few years, ever since a couple of young Goldman Sachs bankers produced a PowerPoint presentation during the pandemic complaining about working conditions. The presentation became a PR nightmare for banks, who tripped all over themselves to try and show the world that they were taking care of their respective, newly-woke junior banker bases. 

Since then, a lack of talent on Wall Street has led investment banks (and some lawyers) to also offer additional incentives and perks to try and retain and recruit talent.

But all of a sudden, some younger bankers are getting more free time off from an industry with a reputation of long hours when business is booming – and it has some junior bankers worried about what it means. 

“Finance-industry rookies are relishing their freedom while some worry about what it means for their future careers,” a new report from Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance says. 

Matt Walicki, a 24-year-old banking analyst at Mizuho Americas, told Bloomberg: “As you enter this period of market uncertainty, it can be a little unsettling” for work to fall off. He said compared to 2020, he “all the more grateful” to have time to play tennis or golf. 

“It’s a slower flow of deals than we’ve seen, and I think that’s shifted the nature of the work,” he added. 

Bloomberg even found a group of Citigroup analysts, casually dressed and “drinking beer at Greenwich Street Tavern on a recent Tuesday as a swarm of colleagues headed out from the bank tower across the street”. 

That same week, some junior employees were able to leave before 3PM. Senior executives at the company reportedly see it as a “good sign” for their work-life balance – something that used to be scoffed at on Wall Street, especially for neophytes. 

First-year analyst at Solomon Partners Joanna Levy commented that she hasn’t had a “ton of downtime,” but that things are “maybe a bit slower than the fall.”

Recall we wrote just weeks ago that Wells Fargo was the latest to offer junior bankers a pay bump, this time to $110,000. 

Recall, we wrote earlier this year that HSBC was set to double its bonuses for junior bankers in order to try and slow defections. It marked a change for the bank, which paid “less than most rivals a year ago after cutting the bonus pool at its global banking and markets division by 15%,” Bloomberg reported at the time.

And the competition in the space is real, with investment banks jostling back-and-forth to stay competitive with pay and retain talent for several years now.

At the beginning of 2022, we reported that JP Morgan had raised its junior bankers’ pay for the second time in a 12 month period. 1st-year investment banking analysts are now set to make $110,000, up from $100,000, The Business Times reported last month. 2nd-year analyst pay will also jump up to $125,000 and 3rd-year pay will rise to $135,000. 

Citigroup also said it was increasing pay after a blockbuster year in 2021, moving base salaries for junior bankers up to $110,000.