How Many Hours do Investment Bankers Work?
Investment bankers work notoriously long hours, with the typical work week filling in 60-80 hours per week, and the occasional high-intensity work week that can push a banker to 100+ hours.
Junior analysts have quite a packed schedule as they are often loaded with tasks such as financial modeling, presentation building, due diligence, market research, and other on-the-job requests.
Most former bankers have reported that it is quite uncommon for an analyst to hit the 100-hour mark. Apparently, this only happens occasionally (once a month) when an analyst is working on multiple live deals or poorly aligned international projects.
The Infamous Goldman Sachs Presentation Leak
In 2021, a leaked Goldman Sachs work conditions survey revealed some of the “ugly” work hour figures reported by some of the bank’s analysts.
Key Presentation Highlights:
- Average Hours Worked per Week: 98 Hours
- Average Analyst Bed Time: 3 AM
- Average Hours Slept per Night: 5 Hours
Notable Proposed Solutions:
- Setting a strict max work capacity of 80 hours per week
- Client meetings requiring materials should be scheduled at least 1 week in advance
- The Friday night 9 PM policy and Saturday policy need to be respected
Overall, the report emphasized significant drops in employee mental and physical health alongside a strong decline in employee intentions to stay with the company after a 6-month period.
Bulge Bracket vs Elite Boutique Banks
The well-known bulge bracket banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Bank of America tend to work analyst-level investment bankers at the industry standard scale of 60-80 hours per week.
Example Bulge Bracket Banks:
- Goldman Sachs
- J.P. Morgan
- Bank of America
- Barclays
- Citi
- UBS
Elite Boutique Banks like Lazard, Evercore, and Centerview run much smaller and leaner investment banking teams which push analysts to work on the higher end of the scale at 80-90 hours per week. With this in mind, compensation at elite boutique investment banks tends to be a touch higher to compensate for the additional workload.
Example Elite Boutique Banks:
- Evercore
- Lazard
- Centerview
- Moelis & Company
- PJT Partners
- Qatalyst
- LionTree
Which Investment Bank has the Best Hours?
Analysts at smaller regional boutique banks like SunTrust, Piper Jaffray, and Raymond James will be your best bet when looking for the best work hours in the industry. Former analysts at these regional boutique banks have reported work weeks closer to 50-70 hours per week.
Example Regional Boutique Banks:
- Marlin & Associates
- India Brook Partners
- Cleantech Group
- PNC
- Duff & Phelps
- BB&T
Investment banking work hours can vary quite a lot by the team and your sector’s active deal flow. Simply put, if you’re currently working in a hot industry, you can expect to work more hours.
Do Investment Bankers Get a Day Off?
Protected Saturdays
Many of the big-name bulge bracket banks have attempted to address their issue of retaining top talent by introducing new rules like “Protected Saturdays” or “Protected Weekends”. These programs are designed to “guarantee” analysts a full day off on Saturdays so that they can take the time off needed for mental and physical health.
The enforcement of these protected weekend programs certainly varies by company and specific teams. There may be some instances where analysts still work on Saturdays for emergencies and live deals, and those at elite boutique banks may not have the same general luxuries due to general small-team work capacity.
Bank Holidays
In general, bankers tend to get light work or half days for most general US holidays. Again, holiday work tends to vary by team and the presence of an active deal, but most managers seem to try and give their junior analyst holidays off when possible. This is particularly true around the big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Mandatory Vacation
Ironically, some of the larger banks have started to enforce new rules making it mandatory for employees to spend their allocated vacation time. Different firms will have different variations of the rule, but as an example, a bank may require an employee to spend 5 consecutive vacation days completely unplugged from emails and work materials.
How Much Sleep Do You Get in Investment Banking?
Investment Bankers who average 80-hour work days will likely get around 7 hours of sleep per night assuming that they go to bed at around 2 AM and wake up around 9 AM.
Working Hours by Role
- Analyst: 60-80+ hours per week
- Associate: 55-80 hours per week
- Vice President (VP): 55-70 hours per week
- Managing Director (MD): 50-60 hours per week
First Year vs Second Year Analysts
Some teams are known to push a fraternity-like “pay your dues” culture in which first-year analysts are given a heavier workload relative to second-year analysts. This cultural norm seems to provide an ongoing cycle enforced by managers who believe in reproducing their experience as investment banking analysts.
Other firms have it the other way around where the better-trained second-year analysts are trusted with critical work and are thus loaded a bit more than the developing first-year analysts.
Investment Banking Interns
Junior-year or penultimate-year summer interns will likely work similar hours to a first-year investment banking analyst. These interns although not necessarily required to tackle a lot of work, will try their best to impress the full-time members in hopes of being able to land an offer for a full-time job after graduation.
For more insight, consider checking out our article covering the Day in the Life of a Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Intern.
Why Are Investment Banking Hours so Poor?
- Investment banks sell a service: Investment banking clients pay tens of millions in service fees to be served what they want when they want it. This means someone at the firm (usually an analyst) will need to be on-call for most days and late nights.
- Last-minute work: Live investment banking deals can bring in a number of different unpredictable, last-minute adjustments. (Ex. An unexpected buyer puts in a last-minute acquisition bid for a company.)
- Large complex deals: A surface-level solution would suggest simply hiring more analysts to lighten up personal workloads. This unfortunately doesn’t quite work well in investment banking as you’ll often run into a problem of having “too many cooks in the kitchen.” For example, having multiple analysts adjust a 10,000-row Excel spreadsheet could lead to inconsistencies that result in a poor experience for the client.
US Investment Banking vs International Locations
The general consensus suggests investment banking operations in London and Greater Europe have slightly better working hours while operations in Hong Kong, Japan, and Broader Asia tend to have slightly longer work hour expectations.
Are Investment Banking Hours Worth It?
From an hourly compensation perspective, you could argue that the hours are not worth it. An investment banking analyst paid an average annual compensation of $170,000 per year (base + bonus) working an average of 80 hours per week will make an hourly rate of $42 an hour. With this in mind, an analyst could earn a similar hourly rate working in management consulting or in corporate finance for a Fortune 500 tech firm. For more insight into investment banking compensation, check out our top 10 list of the highest-paying investment banks.
From a career path perspective, you could argue hours are worth it. Many investment banking analysts tend to exit the investment banking career path to pursue investment careers with hedge funds or private equity firms who are willing to pay them more for slightly less work.
Additional Resources
Are you preparing for a career in investment banking? Nail your technical interviews with our featuring built-from-scratch valuation models, financial ratio analysis, and other important banking fundamentals.
Other Articles You Might Find Helpful
- The Top 10 Highest-Paying Investment Banks
- My Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Resume
- Goldman Sachs Interview Questions
- Day in the Life of a Goldman Sachs Intern
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