Bank of America exec stripped of his role after death of Green Beret employee who worked 100 hours per week

A Bank of America executive known for pushing hard for junior bankers has been moved to a new role at the company following the death of a junior employee who had been working 100 hours a week.

Gary Howe was the head of Bank of America’s Financial Institutions Group (FIG), and was known not to strictly enforce the maximum 80-hour work week for his junior bankers.

Working under Howe had been Leo Lukenas III, a former Green Beret who died suddenly in May at the age of 35. He had worked around the clock to pull off a major merger before his death.

In the weeks before, Lukenas complained about the amount of time he had been working and had considered asking for a 10 percent pay cut in exchange for fewer hours and more sleep.

Now Howe, a senior executive at the bank, has been stripped of his oversight of the division, with some suggesting it could only be a matter of time before he leaves the company entirely.

Howe’s boss, CEO and chairman of the bank, Brian Moynihan, has a reputation for not firing employees, preferring to send a signal by demoting them instead.

Howe, 54, was stripped of his responsibility over the FinTech investment banking team in August – a significant reduction in his authority.

Bank of America is known for handling internal issues quietly, often through pay cuts and title changes rather than outright layoffs, making it difficult for executives to stay on the job long-term in such circumstances.

No disciplinary action has been taken against Howe, but about 50 of the 150 employees in his FinTech unit were transferred to another group last week, reports Bloomberg.

Lukenas’ death has spotlighted the grueling conditions faced by junior bankers and the excessive hours worked.

This incident also sparked debate about whether the culture within the financial sector is simply too demanding and whether appropriate safeguards exist for employees.

Legal experts have suggested that the bank may distance itself from Howe to mitigate the potential legal fallout from Lukenas’ death, although there is no concrete evidence that the junior banker’s excessive working hours directly contributed to his death.

Yet Lukenas’ death, reportedly caused by a fatal blood clot, occurred after a long period of intense work, with some family members thinking the pressure he faced at work may have played a role.

Howe never commented publicly on the matter and deleted his LinkedIn account after the incident.

Despite a reduction in his supervisory responsibilities, Matthew Koder, head of Global Corporate and Investment Banking, said Howe remains a valued leader within the FIG group.

“Gary has our full support as the leader of our Global Financial Institutions Investment Banking group and we continue to invest in this industry-leading franchise,” Koder told the New York Post.

Howe himself had a reputation for pushing young bankers to their limits, which drew complaints from those who worked under him.

Those who had worked with him at UBS criticized his management style and the long hours required for tasks such as putting together pitch books, often for deals that never materialized.

His demanding nature followed him at Bank of America, where he pushed his team hard, including enforcing a much stricter return-to-the-office policy after the pandemic, requiring employees to be in the office by 9:30 a.m. four days a week.

This summer, the bank introduced stricter measures to monitor employee working hours and introduced a new system that requires junior bankers to report their hours daily instead of weekly.

This change came after a Wall Street Journal Investigations have found that some managers instructed employees to underreport their hours and ignore the 80-hour weekly limit introduced more than a decade ago, with approval required for any exceptions.

The limit was set after the death of an intern who had worked for almost 72 hours straight.

However, sources believe that even with these rules, some junior bankers, such as Lukenas, found themselves operating well outside the recommended limits.

Lukenas, who joined Bank of America in March 2023, lived in Brooklyn with his wife and two young children.

The former Army Special Forces member turned to banking in an effort to “pursue new opportunities for his family,” his loved ones said.

People close to him say he had expressed frustration with the long hours and the toll they were taking on his personal life, and that he had considered leaving the company and talked to recruiters about possible job openings at rival banks.

His death came just days after completing work on a $2 billion merger between UMB Financial and Heartland Financial.

A junior banker at BoA said of Lukenas’ death: ‘I think what we would all like is some recognition of what happened, and at least not completely ignore the fact that it could be work-related.

“And to at least just have conversations about how they can make the working lives of junior bankers much better, because that’s long overdue. And if anything, I believe it has gotten worse.”

Howe attended Lukenas’ funeral along with about 50 Bank of America employees, including senior executives.

A donation page was founded in his honor by the non-profit organization 51 Vets with the goal of reaching $1,000,000.

While the long-term effects of this incident on Bank of America’s internal culture remain to be seen, competing banks are also making changes.

Last month, JPMorgan, one of Bank of America’s main competitors, introduced its own limit on working hours for junior bankers, capping them at 80 hours per week.

Whether such moves will lead to lasting change in the high-pressure environment on Wall Street remains to be seen, as employees and insiders will see how the industry responds to the mounting criticism.