Morning Coffee: JPMorgan's resumption of junior banker hiring is not related to burnout. Carried interest and its foibles

The last time investment banks went on a hiring spree for investment banking analysts and associates, it was after the pandemic and juniors at Goldman Sachs had been complaining of 100-hour weeks and insufferable mental health. Together with booming deals, this contributed to a rush of recruitment. Nearly four years later, is history ready to repeat itself?

Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.

Maybe. M&A is still weak, but if you listen to senior bankers, the pipelines are (perpetually) strong. Rates are falling. And ever since the May death of Leo Lukenas, a Bank of American associate who had allegedly been working long hours, the focus on junior bankers' insufferable working hours is back. JPMorgan imposed an 80-hour limit on junior bankers in September. 

Now, JPMorgan seems to be on a hiring spree. Business Insider reports that the bank has posted nine new roles for analysts and associates on its own website in the past few weeks. A recruiter tells Business Insider that JPMorgan is "aggressively" ramping up its M&A team. It's not because it needs more juniors to compensate for everyone who's burned out and no longer working 100-hour weeks. It's down to ebullience about 2025. JPMorgan is even hiring two new US-based banking recruiters to help it hire the new people it needs.   

Who are all these new juniors that JPMorgan wants? The bank is currently looking for multiple associates in mid-market banking in the US, for EMEA analysts and associates to join its pool, and for associates everywhere from Singapore to Frankfurt. The emphasis is on 'plug and play' juniors who've worked elsewhere. Associates need three years' experience. Analysts need to have been either interns or analysts elsewhere. 

It's an unusual time of year for JPMorgan to go back to the market. The 2024 class of fresh junior bankers only arrived in August. The implication is that JPMorgan thinks it under-hired. Other banks may yet decide the same. 

Separately, if you want to work in private equity and to earn carried interest, you should know that it's different at different funds. 

The Financial Times notes that some funds pay carried interest to everyone, including HR and IT professionals, and that some don't. - Some only pay carried interest to their senior investment staff. 

Moreover, some funds operate a "European waterfall" and only pay carried interest once all the investments in a fund have been exited and a threshold of returns met. Whereas some funds operate an "American waterfall" and pay carried interest on a deal-by-deal basis. They will then clawback some of that carry if later investments are unsuccessful. 

Meanwhile 

Ed Cooper, a portfolio manager at Millennium in London, lost money on a trade relating to a collapsed deal involving Chinese drugmakers. (Bloomberg) 

Commerzbank AG disclosed that Jefferies Financial Group Inc. controls 5.33% of its voting rights. (Bloomberg)  

JPMorgan hired John Roberts from Deutsche Bank for FX options trading. (The Trade) 

Households across Europe, the US and Canada have turned their clocks back by an hour. US banks have not. For the power market, this means 25-hour days and it causes substantial headaches. When traders arrive on Monday morning, everything is in disarray. (Bloomberg) 

London Stock Exchange is cutting 200 jobs. (Bloomberg) 

Balyasny is building a gas trading team in Denmark. (Financial News) 

Under a new law, companies will have a legal obligation to anticipate where workers face risks of sexual harassment and take “reasonable steps” to prevent it. This possibly means the end of work Christmas parties. (Bloomberg) 

The UK tax system is a nightmare. A parent of two children who receives a pay rise taking them over £100,000 a year, after pension contributions, will have an effective marginal tax rate of almost 600 per cent on their earnings between £100,000 and £102,000. (The Times) 

Thousands of staff members at Monzo could make money from selling their stock. Two big investors in the fast-growing fintech are set to expand their stakes by buying stock from Monzo employees who were awarded share options as part of their overall pay package. 

The Nintendo family office has a very cool website and employs various former bankers. (Yamauchi Number 10) 

Election night 2016 is a microcosm of everything that is fantastic and terrible about currency trading. The hills and valleys. The emotional and financial highs and lows. Currency trading is mentally exhausting and (sometimes) incredibly satisfying. Tiring and exhilarating. Bad decisions can lead to good outcomes, and good decisions can lead to bad outcomes. Luck rules on any given day, while skill dominates in the long run. (Spectramarkets) 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)