Matthew Koder is giving Gary Howe his "full support" at Bank of America
If there's one person at Bank of America who has been vilified in the wake of the death of Leo Lukenas, the associate who died in May after allegedly working 120-hour weeks, it's Gary Howe, the co-head of the financial institutions group (FIG) team in America. Howe was allegedly personally involved in the $2 billion acquisition of Heartland Finance by UMB Bank, which Lukenas was working on.
Click here to follow our new WhatsApp channel. Get our updates straight to your phone 📱
Howe has support at the highest level within the bank. In a statement yesterday, Matthew Koder, global head of corporate and investment banking at BofA said: “Gary has our full support as leader of our Global Financial Institutions Investment Banking group, and we continue to invest in this leading franchise.”
Koder's show of support came as the New York Post suggested that Howe was sidelined in last week's decision to fold BofA's fintech banking practice into its tech banking practice. Bloomberg reported that 50 fintech bankers are moving into the tech group. The Post says those 50 fintech bankers were part of Howe's team, and that he now manages 'only' 100 people as a result.
54-year-old Howe, who comes from South Africa, joined Bofa from Lazard in 2019. He runs FIG globally and was initially co-head alongside Will Addas and Giorgio Cocini, but Addas retired last year and Cocini left for Pimco in April 2024. The Post suggests that the FIG team became a more excoriating place with Howe as its sole head.
Bank of America told us in May that it investigated and that Lukenas - who died of heart complications - hadn't been working 120-hour weeks. However, the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Howe had been working 'over 100-hour weeks for about a month' before his death. Heartland UMB was understood to be his first deal.
At the time of Lukenas' death, forums like Reddit and Wall Street Oasis were full of angry bankers accusing Howe of overworking the associate. Howe removed his profile from LinkedIn as a result. More recent posts on Wall Street Oasis have complained about a toxic work environment in the BofA FIG team, partly due to the multitude of small deals it brings in, which result in more work than a few large ones.
BofA is now making more of an effort to accurately track the number of hours its juniors work, which could equally allow it to track which senior bankers work juniors the hardest. Juniors in the FIG group have been complaining that their working hours are still extreme and have been made worse because a lot of people have simply burned out and left.
However, one US banking recruiter tells us the BofA FIG Group may be no worse than others. "FIG isn't known for being particularly brutal because regulatory issues mean deals are drawn out," she says. Teams with a reputation for brutality usually include industrials, healthcare and TMT, particularly at boutiques.
The Post suggests that despite Koder's strong support, Howe may yet leave. He has seemingly left other banks in the past, albeit a long time ago - he spent less than a year at JPMorgan in 1995 and was allegedly let go from UBS in 2011.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
