Business

Wall Street banker blasts employees for not responding to 3 a.m. email

If you can’t answer my email at 3 a.m., don’t bother showing up for work at 5 a.m.!

A workaholic Wall Street banker blasted his bleary-eyed underlings last week for not promptly responding to an email at 3 a.m., according to an early-morning email exchange that has since gone viral on social media.

An unidentified junior banker at PJT Partners — a boutique mergers-and-acquisitions adviser headed by its go-getter founder Paul J. Taubman — apologized after being prodded by his insomniac boss in the wee hours of May 13, according to a screenshot of the email chain.

“We’re working on these now (and have been), but we didn’t receive them until 3 am our time and were already in bed,” the sleepy junior banker wrote to the boss at 6:38 a.m. last Wednesday.

The email got an unsympathetic reply, according to the screenshot, which was first posted with the names redacted by Instagram user @arbitrageandy.

“To be clear I am working ET time and I expect my junior team to notify me when they log off,” the boss responded. “Not an excuse 3 am… I sleep [an] average of 5 hours or less. Expect the same or more from my junior team especially on live deals. Please turn around my comments and work as fast as you can.”

Sources close to PJT confirmed that the senior banker was a vice president at the firm.

The chain is titled “Bid Deck,” an investment banking term for an in-depth financial presentation to clients. Bid decks are notoriously time-consuming, and typically put together by the lowest rung of investment bankers, a group that includes so-called associates and analysts.

New York-based PJT Partners — which has brokered big mergers including T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint and Yahoo’s sale to Verizon — declined to comment specifically on the email chain even as it defended its work culture.

“While we do not comment on personnel matters, maintaining a culture of respect, collaboration and a commitment to excellence is our highest priority at PJT Partners,” said a spokesperson. “We remain committed to supporting each other and serving our clients during this time.”

Taubman — a 58-year-old rainmaker who launched his firm in 2013 after being passed over for the number two role at Morgan Stanley — was named by Bloomberg in 2015 as the second-highest-paid executive on Wall Street when he amassed roughly $164 million in compensation

Wall Street has come under the microscope before for its grueling treatment of lower-level staff, including in 2013 when 21-year-old, London-based Bank of America intern Moritz Erhardt was found dead in his apartment after working for three nights straight.

A post-mortem investigation found Erhardt died from an epileptic seizure, and his family said they believed it was caused by a lack of sleep.

While some large investment banks have since vowed to make life easier on lower-level bankers — especially as they seek to compete with the tech sector for talent — smaller “boutique” investment banks have continued to lean heavily on junior analysts and associates to execute complicated financial deals.

Wall Street analysts tend to make under $100,000 a year, while associates tend to earn between $120,000 and $150,000, according to Glassdoor.com.