The banks with shortest working hours may not be those you thought
If you want to work in investment banking, you have to accept that you will not have much of a life outside of it. The industry considers 80 hours a reasonable limit. 100 hours are when things get problematic, but 120-hour work weeks are not unheard of.
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That being said, not all banks have the same expectations in terms of working hours: some are much more understanding of work-life-balance than their peers. Unfortunately, banks rarely share this information with the public (who wants to proudly say that their people “only” work 60 hours a week?) but a new ranking offers some pointers.
“The Best Banking Firms”, an annual ranking by industry insider firm Vault says the best banks for hours are those in the table below. There are a few surprises.
Vault says its results are based on a survey with "thousands" of responses, but ranking Centerview Partners and Moelis & Co. first and second for hours looks curious. Both banks are very prestigious boutiques, with some of the best compensation in the industry: Centerview paid £261k ($327k) per head in London last we checked, while Moelis was on track to pay around $609k.
Neither firm is particularly well-known for its work-life balance, however. Centerview was sued in 2023 by a former analyst who fired was fired by the firm. She said that her suggested work schedule – 105 hours a week, or 15 hours a day – was considered an insufficient contribution to her role. Figures from industry forum Wall Street Oasis suggest that the average work week at Centerview is around 83.3 hours.
Moelis, historically, has been much the same. The bank topped WSO’s working hours ranking in both 2018 and 2017, with founded Ken Moelis quite unapologetic about the situation. A former analyst from that time called the hours “brutal”. Of course, if both firms did so well in Vault’s ranking, things must have changed significantly, and quite rapidly (at Centerview) at least.
Usually, what impacts working hour culture at banks is very rarely altruistic, and usually morbid. The death of Moelis associate Thomas Hughes back in 2015 is the sort of thing that does change cultures - especially after comments from the banker's father that Hughes had turned to drugs to cope with long hours and work stress.
Aside from working hours, Centerview topped many of Vault’s rankings. It was considered the best bank in the world overall, as well as the second most prestigious (behind Goldman, of course). It won a vast majority of other categories, from compensation (despite average compensation cratering in the UK) to “vacation policies” and “relationships with managers”. As far as we could tell, it didn’t place outside of the top five for anything.
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