Junior banker at US investment firm collapses after 110-hour workweeks, diagnosed with pancreatic failure

More than a dozen junior bankers have reportedly left Baird’s industrials team since the start of 2024.

Junior bankers at Robert W Baird, a Milwaukee-based investment bank, claimed they were made to work up to 110 hours a week, leading to severe health consequences, including hospitalisation and organ failure, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The employees, part of the firm’s industrials team, said they were regularly subjected to 20-hour workdays and extreme pressure, in breach of long-standing efforts on Wall Street to rein in punishing schedules.

The Journal detailed the accounts of several former junior employees who described an unrelenting work culture. One employee reportedly spent nearly an entire year on a single deal and recalled working through the night to prepare documentation. On one occasion, he stepped away from his desk for approximately 25 minutes to have dinner, prompting a manager to reprimand him, saying he should not leave his desk for more than five minutes without informing someone.

Another employee told Human Resources that the workload had become unsustainable. He later collapsed at home and was hospitalised. Doctors diagnosed him with pancreatic failure, a life-threatening condition they said was likely linked to chronic overwork. A few weeks after a second hospital visit, he was dismissed from the firm for “poor productivity,” according to the report.

The issue drew wider attention after an anonymous post appeared on Wall Street Oasis, a forum popular among finance professionals. The post alleged that junior employees at Baird were “treated as scum.” Other junior bankers responded with similar accounts of harsh treatment.

A mid-level banker, Aaron Haney, was named in the Journal report as someone who frequently assigned strenuous schedules. Following the post’s viral spread, Haney was dismissed from the company.

The report also cited an incident from last year when a group of junior bankers, who had reportedly been working until 4 am for consecutive weeks, were invited to what they believed was a celebratory pizza gathering in Chicago. Instead, managers used the occasion to criticise their performance and told them they needed to improve their efficiency. When the bankers pointed out the extreme hours they had already been working, they were allegedly told their efforts were still insufficient.

Despite efforts across Wall Street to cap weekly working hours at 80—implemented following mounting scrutiny in recent years—former employees said these rules were regularly ignored by Baird’s industrials team. Managers were said to have frequently sought exemptions from mandatory time off, particularly on Saturdays.

In response to the mounting concerns, Baird’s senior bankers held a town hall meeting with junior staff after the viral post. While some attendees said the meeting helped alleviate concerns, others remained reluctant to speak out, fearing their complaints would be perceived as weakness. Several former employees told the Journal that senior bankers would often remind juniors how much worse their own experiences had been in earlier years.

More than a dozen junior bankers have reportedly left Baird’s industrials team since the start of 2024. Some of these individuals had been among those hospitalised for exhaustion, the report said.

The revelations follow a string of tragedies in the industry tied to excessive working hours. In recent years, two junior bankers died under circumstances believed to be linked to extreme workloads. Carter McIntosh, a junior banker at Jefferies, died from a suspected drug overdose, while Leo Lukenas, a former analyst at Bank of America, died after suffering a blood clot.