Wall Street is a grueling industry. For the finance industry’s youngest workers, it can be especially brutal. When merger-and-acquisition deals need closing, banks rely on the most junior employees for the gruntwork to make sure that multibillion-dollar deals don’t fall apart. Gargantuan workloads push people to sleep under their desks, or have only enough time to take a shower and a short nap, before going back to work. The physical toll this takes on people can be overwhelming.
In 2013, a 21-year-old Bank of America intern named Moritz Erhardt died of an epileptic seizure while taking a shower before going to work — after spending 72 straight hours in the office. A spate of deaths showed that something was deeply wrong with the way that the industry was working, and some banks started to institute mandatory days off or more rest time. During the pandemic, Goldman Sachs’ junior bankers revolted over their long hours and (relatively) low pay. This month, scrutiny is back on Bank of America after two of its young employees have died suddenly after grueling working hours.
On Thursday night, a 25-year-old London trader named Adnan Deumic died of a heart attack while at an industry event, Bloomberg reports. Deumic, who was playing a game of soccer just before he died, was reportedly an active amateur-hockey player and had been working for the bank since 2021.
Deumic’s death came just a few weeks after a 35-year-old New York investment-banking associate, Leo Lukenas, died of acute coronary artery thrombosis. He had been looking to leave his 100-hour-a-week job, according to Reuters. Lukenas, a former Green Beret, had worked at the bank’s Manhattan headquarters. He’d been working on a $2 billion merger of two small banks, UMB Financial and Heartland Financial, before he died.
“The death of our teammate is a tragedy, and we are shocked by the sudden loss of a popular, young colleague,” a Bank of America spokesperson told Bloomberg after Deumic’s death. “We are committed to providing our full support to Adnan’s family, his friends and to our many employees grieving his loss.”
