• JPMorgan is increasing its hiring of analysts and associate investment bankers, BI has learned.
• This comes after the bank set new limits on junior working hours and saw a 31% increase in deal fees.
• The fourth quarter is typically a slow period of hiring for investment banks.

A much anticipated one recovery of investment banks has not yet been fully realized – but that does not prevent the US’s largest bank from increasing staffing.

JPMorgan Chase is in the midst of an off-cycle hiring spree for junior investment bankers, according to people familiar with the bank’s recruiting efforts and its online job board. The rise comes on the heels of new parameters the bank rolled out to protect its analysts and employees from burnout as well as a big jump in the bank’s dealmaking fees.

JPMorgan has posted about 9 new analyst and associate investment banking roles on its website in the past two weeks alone, seeking talent for teams that advise on mergers and acquisitions for financial institutions and healthcare companies, as well as its equity capital markets division, which provides advice on IPOs.

A person recently asked to recommend talent to the bank said the firm is also aggressively ramping up the hiring of junior bankers on its M&A team, who work alongside industry experts on mergers and acquisitions. This person requested anonymity to protect their relationships within the bank.

An industry headhunter told Business Insider that online job postings tend to paint a limited picture of investment bank hiring because Wall Street does much of its recruiting through internal referrals and through internal and external headhunters. In fact, JPMorgan’s careers page also recently posted two jobs for internal investment banking recruiters, presumably to help hire more bankers.

A JPMorgan executive familiar with the firm’s hiring efforts said the uptick is the result of overall growth and business — not the bank’s new policy to protect junior bankers from burnout. In fact, Wall Street dealmakers only had one of their own brightest quarters in three years, and JPMorgan was one great benefactor with investment banking fees rising 31% in the third quarter compared to last year.

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The executive also said the bank has been hiring at all levels of investment banking this year. JPMorgan’s website lists postings for two vice presidents on the M&A team, among other more senior investment banking jobs.

What makes the appointment unusual is its “off-cycle” timing. The pipeline for early career investment banking is high structured and systematic. The banks receive a new crop of first-year analysts each summer, usually in July. However, getting that job usually requires you to have one summer internship with one’s future investment banking employer, a process that often begins in the second year of college. The associate pipeline is similarly structured and consists primarily of former analysts who were promoted or via direct MBA hires. Off-season rentals from other banks are not uncommon, but tend to be limited.

As Business Insider previously reported, JPMorgan recently said it would tak junior banker’s weekly working hours to 80 per week, incl important exceptions. It also created a new HR role specifically to oversee the “well-being” of junior bankers..

Hundred-hour weeks have become ubiquitous in the high-pressure industry, and there has been a renewed outcry over working conditions for junior bankers after death of an employee at Bank of America in May.

That same month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank’s executives evaluated the news of the death and asked, “what can we learn from it?” JPMorgan’s new policy, which marks the boldest yet by a bank with bulges to assuage concerns about the industry’s grueling work culture, was first reported by the WSJ about a month later.

The employment follows one year lull in business which made investment banking jobs even more competitive than usual. The first six months of 2024 were “very slow” in terms of bank hiring, said the investment banking industry headhunter, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media. In the last month or two, however, he has seen a large increase in the number of clients looking to hire bankers.

“The lateral recruiting market in Q4 is typically one of the slowest,” the recruiter said. “But the companies are benefiting from the upturn in business.”