Popular VP fired from overworked junior banking team came from JPMorgan's middle office
If you feel the temptation to join Robert W. Baird's industrials sector team in Chicago, today's Wall Street Journal article and the accompanying thread on Wall Street Oasis may put you off. It is not an easy place to work.
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One year after the death of Leo Lukenas at Bank of America and four months after Carter McIntosh passed away at Jefferies, it seems that Baird's industrials team is still working junior bankers into a state of collapse. 110 hour weeks are common. There are "consistent" 20-hour work days. There have been hospitalizations. One junior collapsed at home with exhaustion from the workload and was diagnosed with pancreatic failure. Another analyst was shouted at for leaving his desk for 25 minutes in the evening without informing his boss, who said anything more than five minutes away required notification.
Baird didn't respond to our multiple requests to comment in recent weeks.
Who's to blame for the hostile environment? In previous cases where junior bankers have been poorly treated, fingers have right or wrongly been pointed at the managing directors (MDs). Gary Howe at Bank of America was widely vilified in the wake of Lukenas' death, to the extent that head of the investment bank Matthew Koder declared last October that Howe had his "full support". At Jefferies, McIntosh's boss Lawrence Chu was named in articles discussing McIntosh's death, although no blame was attributed. Howe and Chu are still employed at BofA and Jefferies, according to their FINRA profiles.
At Baird, however, a vice president (VP) was allegedly implicated in the harsh conditions. The WSJ claims that Aaron Haney, a VP on the industrials team, was let go this month after posts on Wall Street Oasis complained about a mid-ranking banker assigning 20-hour work days to juniors. This hasn't been confirmed by Haney or Baird.
Haney has since disappeared from LinkedIn. However, his FINRA profile lives on. It shows a circuitous route to an investment banking career. After graduating from the University Of Illinois Urbana - Champaign in 2014, Haney initially worked for JPMorgan's finance team as an audit analyst in commercial banking. Then he joined Stout Risius Ross, a consulting and corporate finance firm in Chicago. Then he finally moved to Baird and worked his way up as a junior investment banker, despite being four years older than the rest.
Haney's banking career therefore involved an arc from a non-target university to a middle-office job at JPMorgan, to a small firm, and finally to Baird, four years after analysts had joined.
It seems unreasonable, though, to single him out. Where were Baird's MDs while the 110-hour weeks were being worked? Seemingly nowhere to be seen, or at least not paying attention. The original WSO thread complained that "seniors did not care." If Haney - who reportedly worked 20-hour days alongside his analysts - was let go, then MDs should be held to account too? They seemingly include the likes of Adam Czaia, and Baird's co-heads of industrials, Joseph Packee and Mike Lindemann.
MDs have disappeared before. Edward Ruff, an MD accused of shouting at juniors at Citi, was put on leave and then left last year. VPs have also mistreated juniors and been given a second chance. PJT Partners retained a mid-ranking banker who sent a 3am email asking why no one was responding in 2020. By comparison, Haney - who colleagues say was popular and tried to protect juniors where possible - looks like a scapegoat.
Photo by Sam Mgrdichian on Unsplash
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