Morning Coffee: Bank of America could now track which senior bankers overwork juniors the most. Millennium's new money

When Bank of America financial institutions group (FIG) associate Leo Lukenas died in late April of a coronary incident after allegedly working 120-hour weeks (something the bank denied) on a deal involving UMB's acquisition of Heartland Financial, much of the immediate vitriol was directed towards the co-head of the FIG group, who was said to have been working on the deal too.

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Now, nearly five months after Lukenas' death, Bank of America has revamped its system for monitoring junior bankers' working hours in a way that might enable it to call out managing directors who place the biggest demands on their juniors.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that as JPMorgan is limiting juniors to 80 hour weeks (unless they're on a live deal, like Lukenas), Bank of America plans to track its juniors a lot more closely.

BofA is introducing a new reporting tool for juniors' working hours, starting next week. The tool, which is an iteration of Bank of America's existing tracking method, will require juniors to log their hours daily instead of weekly, to gauge how much capacity they have for additional work on a scale of 1-4, to detail which deals they are working on, and to list the senior bankers overseeing their assignments. 

If it wanted, Bank of America could therefore now assemble a list of the managing directors whose juniors seem to log the longest weeks. 

Whether the bank will do so, and whether it had the capability to do so previously (probably) aren't clear (Bank of America didn't respond to multiple requests to comment), but the tool could help. Indications are that extreme working hours are the result of heavy deal flow and individual managers. When the Wall Street Journal previously reported in August that BofA's existing tracking system wasn't working properly, one associate said they'd been given a day off by HR, but that their boss had intervened and told them to work without tracking it.

The new system may not do much to subvert the enfeeblement of HR or the MDs who sidestep it, but it does at least make a move in the right direction. Anecdotally, juniors at Bank of America are still complaining on forums that their working hours are extreme and that the FIG group and its MDs are particularly bad. "Unreasonable work and last minute changes into the night," said one in late August, adding that because a lot of people have left the group, the working hours there are worse than ever. 

Separately, while small hedge funds like ExodusPoint are being squeezed by investors imposing a hurdle rate on new assets under which they will only pay performance fees if ExodusPoint's returns exceed those on three month Treasury bills, big multistrategy hedge funds like Millennium appear to be thriving. 

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Millennium is raising $7-$10bn in new cash and said the money is being raised in the callable format preferred by private equity funds, under which clients will make pledges that Millennium can tap over time. As pledges are tapped and funds are invested, the pool is replenished. In this way, Millennium will have access to a large cash cushion, but the uninvested money won't dilute its returns. 

There's no mention of a hurdle rate. It also looks like Millennium has people queueing up to give it money: in June, Bloomberg said it was looking to raise around $7bn. That's since increased to $10m max. 

Meanwhile... 

"You can track hours and promise days off, but at the end of the day, if there's work to get done and the expectation is that it's coming from your senior banker because a client needs it, that's going to get done. That's how they make money." (Business Insider) 

Gary Stevenson probably wasn't the best trader at Citi. It was Rob Lloyd. (Financial Times) 

Point72 is thinking of returning some capital to investors. (Bloomberg) 

Trading revenues at US banks may now be declining. This means banking revenues will need to step up. (Financial Times) 

Melissa Goldman left Goldman Sachs for Google. Now she's back as a partner and head of technology engineering for global banking and markets. (Reuters) 

George Arzeno from Citadel was going to join Point72 but suddenly Balyasny hired him instead. (Business Insider) 

Rokos has made changes to its ECM business and two partners, global ECM head Benjamin Spielman, who’s based in New York, and Damien Brosnan, who focused on Asia ECM out of Hong Kong, are leaving. Rokos will be doing ECM through its "broader trading strategy" instead. (Bloomberg) 

Evercore's average UK banker earned £132k last year. (Financial News) 

At least three top investment bankers from different securities firms have been detained by Chinese authorities since August. One fled the country and has been repatriated. It's not unusual for China to seize passports. (Bloomberg) 

Leaving a job is like leaving a relationship. Recognizing the positives of a job means you can prepare for losing them and not let those losses overwhelm you. (WSJ) 

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