An embattled Bank of America executive has been stripped of responsibility for a key money-making division — after months of uproar over the headline-grabbing death of an overworked junior banker in his unit.
Gary Howe, the hard-charging boss of the Wall Street giant’s Financial Institutions Group (FIG), lost oversight of the fintech investment banking team in August, sources told The Post — and Bloomberg reported about the fintech transfer last week.
Howe’s FIG unit employed Leo Lukenas III, a 35-year-old former Green Beret, died in May After reportedly logging several 100-hour weeks to help close a billion-dollar merger.
Lucenas’ death shine a harsh light on The pressure-cooker culture of Wall StreetThat led to intense scrutiny of BofA’s guardrails for junior bankers – and whether managers turned a blind eye to subordinates working excessive hours.
The bank said Howe would not face any disciplinary action in the immediate aftermath of Lukenas’ death.
But last Monday it was reported that about 50 of New York FIG’s 150 employees at the lucrative fintech unit were moving to its technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) group. according to bloomberg,
Star Banker Matthew Sharnoff – Rank as second highest The FIG member – which brought down the total value of deals done by them across all banks last year – was among those transferred to TMT, according to Mergerlinks, sources said.
Kevin Bruner, the bank’s president of global M&A and global head of TMT, told the outlet that the move was part of an industrywide shift in financial services toward software.
The shrinking of Howe’s team by almost a third was seen by some as a potential blow to his future at the bank.
“It was a forceful move against Gary,” a source with knowledge of the bank’s inner workings told The Post, adding that it would be difficult for Howe to make the bonus.
Another source close to the bank speculated that CEO Brian Moynihan was giving quiet encouragement to Howe to show himself out.
“Bank of America doesn’t fire people,” said the former BofA executive. “There will be a title change, a drop in salary. “I don’t think Gary will be able to get there in six months.”
One labor lawyer speculated that the bank may be trying to distance itself from Howe before any potential lawsuit.
“I’m sure an investigation was conducted internally,” Taveer Rahman, a partner at Filiptos who has handled cases against several big banks but is not involved in the Lukenas situation, told The Post.
“I could see him as a falling man.”
Howe, 54, has not commented since Lukenas suffered a fatal blood clot in his heart on May 4.
There is no evidence that long hours at work led to Leucaenas’ death.
Howe did not respond to multiple requests for comment. He closed his LinkedIn account shortly after Lucenas’ death.
“As the leader of our global financial institutions investment banking group, Gary has our full support and we will continue to invest in this leading franchise,” said Matthew Corder, head of global corporate and investment banking.
Last week, Howe announced the addition of George Matsuzaka as co-head of global insurance. He was the global head of insurance at UBS.
A junior banker who worked with Lukenas told The Post that in early August, BofA implemented a new monitoring system that forced junior bankers to report their hours daily instead of every week.
The decision came at the same time as the explosive Wall Street Journal How to get busted on BofA Managers told direct reports to lie about their extensive hours, even if they exceeded the 80-hour limit – which was imposed more than a decade ago after the death of a 21-year-old intern, Who worked for three consecutive days.
“He called me in the middle of the week to say let’s make sure you don’t have 80 hours,” a junior banker who worked with Lukenas told The Post.
The banker said he put in about 100 hours after previously pushing back the limit, which is monitored by executive-level “employees” who report to managers like Howe.
“If you work after 2 am, you will have to immediately inform the managing director about the transaction,” the source said.
“They are trying to change the culture. We’ll see how long this lasts.”
Yet, according to a former senior BofA executive, Howe was also responsible for the hours investigation.
“Gary is paid to make sure junior bankers are not overworked,” the former executive said. “If someone was working 100 hours a week, that should have raised a red flag.”
Howe received an MBA from the prestigious Wharton School in 1994. After a brief stint at JPMorgan, he worked for nine years at Credit Suisse First Boston before landing at Swiss rival UBS in 2005.
During his six-year tenure at UBS’s FIG division he told UBS colleagues that despite being a relative of the family behind the De Beers diamond empire, Howe had a reputation for working hard to the junior bankers who worked with him. According to a source at UBS.
“People complained about his attitude, his respect for others and his work hours for people.” a UBS source said. “People complained about working 100 hours a week.”
Howe’s interest in PitchBooks had also raised eyebrows at UBS, with junior bankers spending more time than most assembling them, according to a UBS source – and often wondering why.
The UBS source said of Howe, “He believed a business could win by putting together the biggest books.” “We were wasting time doing pitch books that no one would see and would get no business. These books were full of analyzes of deals we wouldn’t get.”
According to the source, UBS passed over Howe when selecting the head of its FIG division in 2011. After he arrived at Lazard’s FIG unit, Howe earned a distinct reputation — one for not bringing in enough deals, said a source with direct knowledge of the situation. He was ousted in 2019, the source said.
Months later, Howe joined BofA as co-head of FIG Banking of the Americas. The South African native was promoted to run the global FIG division in 2021 alongside Will Adas and Giorgio Coccini.
According to sources close to the bank, Aidas, who used to focus more on the concerns of the rank and file, retired last year to devote more time to his family.
According to a junior banker who worked with him at the time, the FIG unit under Howe had become “a tougher department without him”.
Indeed, Howe’s first order of business was to enforce the company’s return-to-office order after the pandemic, about which Adas was more lax, the source said.
The junior banker said, “When Will left on Friday, I remember we came in the following Monday and Howe reset the expectation by saying we all had to be in the office by 9:30 a.m. and that’s it for the week. I will have to stay in the office for four days.”
The source called Howe a strict boss, but also said that he, Lukenas and others pushed themselves to advance by working long hours.
Last month, rival JP Morgan also imposed a limit on junior bankers’ working hours at 80 per week – the first such limit imposed by the country’s largest lender.
In 2013, BofA instituted employee safety measures following the death of 21-year-old investment banking trainee Moritz Erhardt, who reportedly died of an epileptic seizure after working non-stop for nearly 72 hours.
The sources said the new policies bar junior bankers from working more than 80 hours per week unless it is approved by supervisors and there is a compelling reason to make an exception.
They also prevented junior bankers from working on Saturdays or holidays without the signature of the chief operating officer, said five sources with direct knowledge of the policy.
“The rules were made so that what happened to (Moritz) couldn’t happen,” the former BofA executive said.
A former human resources executive at BofA said: “I was very active in making sure that these young people were leaving at the right time. “We were crazy about it.”
The sources said two employees, typically a vice president or director who earns about $350,000 a year for walking on stage and talking with junior bankers and associates, were assigned to the New York FIG unit, which has 150 employees. More than half of the employees were junior bankers. ,
Lukenus, who lived in Brooklyn with his wife and two young children, seemed exhausted from the hard hours he had been working since being hired in March 2023, according to a recruiter the former Green Beret contacted two months before his death. Was.
He was not the only stressed junior banker at BofA looking for an exit plan. Several people in Howe’s department had been looking for jobs at a rival bank since last year, a senior banker at that bank with direct knowledge of his calls told The Post.
Douglas Walters, managing partner of Grayfox Recruitment, said Lukenas complained of working more than 100 hours a week and having little time to spend with his family, according to Reuters.
“He made a comment saying, ‘Hey, I’ll trade hours of sleep for a 10% (pay) cut,'” Walters told the outlet in May.
Until his death, Lukenas was working on helping BofA client UMB Financial buy Heartland Financial for $2 billion. The deal closed on 29 April, three days before Lukenas suffered a fatal blood clot.
“The day before his death there was a group call about the UMB deal and he was excited about getting it done,” said BofA’s junior banker.
Despite the lack of evidence that long hours on the job caused Lukenas’ death, some family members believe it may have been a contributing factor.
“I don’t think anyone should work that many hours and suffer that stress,” a relative told The Post on condition of anonymity.
Howe attended Lukenas’s funeral at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, along with about 50 other Bank of America employees, according to a source who also attended the funeral.
At the end of the service, U.S. Army officers played Earth Wind & Fire’s recording of “September”, honoring a request made by Lukenas as a Green Beret that he be released during a military operation, the source said. had died.
