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The tragic death of former Green Beret and Bank of America employee Leo Lukenas III has become a flashpoint of anger over allegedly unrealistic work expectations on Wall Street partly because some bankers say Lukenas’ experience is so similar to their own.

While there is no evidence that job-related stress caused the blood clot that killed 35-year-old Lukenas on May 2, a recent Reuters report that he was talking with a recruiter to find a job with better hours has put a glaring spotlight on the 100-hour work weeks he was said to be juggling before his death.

Multiple Wall Street sources told The Post about scary health issues they claim are related to their high-stress occupation.

There have been incidents where analysts pass out in meetings due to lack of sleep/food, and other times where analysts are hospitalized due to panic attacks and nobody steps in to check in on them, a Bank of America employee alleged.

On Thursday, a second Bank of America employee died.

Adnan Deumic, a 25-year-old London-based trader, was playing in a five-a-side charity soccer tournament with other finance employees when he fell suddenly and was administered CPR, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

While the cause of death is unknown, the source told The Post that cardiac arrest is suspected. There is no known connection between Deumic’s work and his death.

While Deumic worked closer to 60 hours a week than 100, those hours were highly stressful. He was involved in trades worth as much as $1 billion some days despite his lack of experience, the person said.

He probably worked 11 to 12 hours a day and those hours were incredibly intense he didnt have time to get coffee, the source said.

This isn’t the first time bankers have been angry about a colleague’s untimely death, but the current response has prompted more people to speak up, sources said.

Employees are finding vindication and camaraderie in popular financial chat boards on Reddit and WallStreetOasis.com. And popular Instagram accounts like Litquidity and Overheard on Wall Street, with more than a million followers between them, have given airtime to some of the most egregious problems.

One Wall Street Oasis post from an anonymous banker, highlighting a list of demands for employees welfare, recently generated more than 450 comments.

The anonymous banker behind Overheard on Wall Street has spoken with multiple Bank of America employees and shared some of their comments with The Post.

Bank of America has a system called ‘banker diary,’ where junior bankers input their weekly hours. It is supposed to safeguard us from overworking by flagging anyone who inputs more than 80 hours a week, one said. I cannot actually even start to count the number of times I was asked by [managing directors and directors] to lie on my banker diary so that it wouldnt get flagged.

“Our policy is clear and we expect employees to accurately record their hours,” Bank of America said in a statement.

While Wall Street culture varies by firm and department, investment banking  the division in which Lukenas worked  is notoriously the most grueling. It’s also the most lucrative, where bankers only a year out of college can pull down $200,000 a year, but regularly clock 100-hour work weeks.

It’s a top-down problem, sources  most of whom asked for anonymity because they feared repercussions for speaking out said.

VPs do not respect junior peoples time, a managing director sympathetic to younger bankers told The Post. “They will proactively give someone a piece of work at 6 p.m. on a Friday that could have given it to them on Tuesday, but [managers] were distracted.

Mark Moran now runs an investor relations firm Equity Animal, but spent four years working on mergers and acquisitions at Lazard and Centerview Partners.

You typically dont have to get to the office until 10 a.m. and you often dont get any work assigned until the afternoon, he said of many junior employees at large banks But around 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., you often get an assignment and have to stay until 2 p.m. finishing it.

These CEOs love talking about efficiency and productivity but they literally waste their most important asset: Peoples time, one source who left Wall Street after six years told The Post.

Most junior employees, typically referred to as associates, spend just two years on the bottom rung before leaving a firm or getting promoted.

Lukenas, who lived in Brooklyn, had been a Green Beret for more than a decade from 2013 until he joined the bank as an associate last July according to his LinkedIn page. He leaves behind a wife and two young children. 

His death came three days after working around 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row, completing a $2 billion merger, according to Reuters.

Those two associate years can reportedly be hell, with employees complaining they have no control over their schedules.

According to a survey conducted by Overheard on Wall Street, junior bankers average just 5 hours of sleep a night.

One source who left investment banking for private equity told The Post that, at her old job, she was so exhausted that she had to rest her eyes in a bathroom stall every few hours just to function.

Sleep deprivation can lead to depression, physical illness and, in some cases, use of drugs like cocaine to stay awake, bankers said.

Hank Medina, who chronicles Wall Street culture on the Instagram account Litquidity, told The Post how, after months of chest pain and heart palpitations when he worked at Jefferies Bank, he finally worked up the courage to ask his manager for time off to see a doctor.

The pain was diagnosed as being caused by incredibly high stress and a lack of sleep,” Medina said.

The week the doctor had me wear a heart monitor, the analyst I was working with told me he also had one [chest pain] happens a lot, Medina said. “The adrenaline from the job was unsustainable. 

Another Bank of America source told Overheard on Wall Street: I have led deal calls with clients from a hospital bed before  apologizing for the sound of my heart rate monitor in the background. I returned to work after sick leave only to be made to feel guilty for taking time off for my health, when the job is the primary cause for my health issues.

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Over the years, a handful of suicides and deaths have resulted in some reforms. In 2013, after a Bank of America intern in London died of a seizure after working until 6 a.m. for three consecutive days, Goldman Sachs implemented the so-called Saturday rule requiring employees be out of the office and not working between 9 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Sunday. 

Other firms like JPMorgan and Citi reportedly adopted similar rules but sources told The Post those guidelines are now frequently ignored at some firms.

Wall Street firms including D.E. Shaw, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs offer egg-freezing as a benefit for female employees as a benefit a process that would free them up to work intensely before starting a family.

But, sources say, much of the change is cyclical. When profits are high and there is a talent shortage, banks assuage junior employees by promising to limit meetings or giving them Peloton bikes, as Jefferies has.

But as soon as profits dip, firms are pressured to cut costs, reduce headcount and force more work on fewer employees starting the cycle again.

And some older bankers just aren’t sympathetic.

What happened to [Lukenas] was absolutely tragic, but for junior bankers to leverage is untimely death with the aim of reducing the heavy and intense workload required to be a successful investment banker is inappropriate, one banker who spent two decades on Wall Street told The Post. “Elon Musk works more than 100 hours a week and he hasnt dropped dead.”

Another banker added: If you dont want to do the job, there are three junior people behind you who will take your seat.”

But one former Goldman employee told The Post there’s no excuse for the exhausting workload.

While not working with one’s hands like in a factory, working 100-hour work weeks as a junior financial analyst has similar features to serious labor in being physically demanding and taxing that are under appreciated, Jon Hartley, who is now an economics PhD Candidate studying labor and financial economics at Stanford, told The Post. There’s an overall culture that needs to change which requires both employers and employees to put health and well-being first, above incremental low-productivity hours.

I dont get it because it wouldnt take that much to be a leader and make real change, another longtime Wall Streeter told The Post. Its such an archaic culture.

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Sports

Panthers-Hurricanes Game 5 preview: Can Carolina force another game?

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Panthers-Hurricanes Game 5 preview: Can Carolina force another game?

All signs pointed to the Florida Panthers finishing off the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 4, but the Canes kept the series rolling with a 3-0 win on Monday.

Will the Panthers finish the story in Game 5? Or will the Hurricanes send the festivities back to South Florida again?

Here are matchup notes heading into Wednesday’s Game 5 from ESPN Research, as well as betting intel from ESPN BET:

More on Game 4: Recap | Grades

Matchup notes

Florida Panthers at Carolina Hurricanes
Game 5 | 8 p.m. ET | TNT

The Panthers’ odds to win the series are now -1600, adjusted from -5000 heading into Game 4. The Hurricanes’ odds have shifted to +750 (adjusted from +1500) after their win. The Panthers’ odds to win the Cup are now +105 (previously -110), while the Canes’ are now +1800. Sergei Bobrovsky is the leading Conn Smythe candidate in this series at +200, followed by Aleksander Barkov (+800).

Game 4 was the Canes’ first win in the round since Game 7 of the 2006 Eastern Conference finals against the Buffalo Sabres, snapping a 15-game conference finals losing streak. It was the longest losing streak in NHL playoff history for a team in the round preceding the Stanley Cup Final. The Hurricanes are now 4-4 all-time in Game 4s when trailing 3-0 in a best-of-seven series.

Frederik Andersen made 20 saves for his fifth career playoff shutout, his second with the Hurricanes. He joins Cam Ward (four), Kevin Weekes (two) and Petr Mrazek (two) as goaltenders with multiple playoff shutouts in Whalers/Hurricanes Stanley Cup playoffs history.

Carolina’s Logan Stankoven scored playoff goal No. 5 in the second period. He joins Erik Cole (six in 2002) and Warren Foegele (five in 2019) as the only rookies in Whalers/Hurricanes history to score at least five goals in a single Stanley Cup playoffs year.

Sebastian Aho scored an empty-net goal in the third period, his 32nd career playoff tally. That extends his own franchise record for career goals in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Panthers were shut out for the second time this postseason; both games were at home — the other instance was Game 6 of the second-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Florida went 0-4 on the power play in Game 4, and the team is now 0-8 with the man advantage in the last two games of this series after going 4-for-5 in Games 1 and 2.

Though he hasn’t scored a goal in the past two games, Sam Bennett has a team-leading nine this postseason. That is two shy of the franchise record in a single playoff year, currently held by Matthew Tkachuk (2023) and Carter Verhaeghe (2024).


Scoring leaders

GP: 16 | G: 6 | A: 9

GP: 14 | G: 5 | A: 9

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Liverpool fan says his baby was flung 15ft in his pram and his partner run over during trophy parade

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Liverpool fan says his baby was flung 15ft in his pram and his partner run over during trophy parade

A father has told Sky News how his partner was driven over, and his baby son was flung 15ft in his pram, after they were hit by a vehicle during the Liverpool parade collision.

Daniel Everson, 36, had been with Sheree Aldridge and their five-month-old baby, Teddy, at Liverpool FC’s victory parade on Monday.

“The best day of my life turned into worst”, said Daniel, a lifelong fan of ‘The Reds’.

Daniel described the moment the car came towards him and his family.

“I tried to hold on to the front of the car and try and stop it, push it, do whatever I could [to stop it] from hitting my partner and my baby.

'The best day of my life turned into worst', Daniel Everson told Sky News.
Image:
Daniel Everson was in the crowd for the Liverpool trophy parade when the incident took place

“Me and my partner were flat on the roof, on the bonnet… we were just both trying to hold on for dear life with Ted next to us.

“And my partner went under the wheels of the car, of the front of the car, and it rolled over her leg, and I just bounced off to the side, but my boy and his pram got bounced totally in the opposite direction – about 15ft down the road.

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“As soon as that happened, I just started screaming for my partner, and I found her and I asked where Teddy was, and she didn’t know… and I found him and he was okay, thank God.

“He was in the road, in his pram, on his back, and I grabbed him. I chucked the pushchair to the side and I ran up to some paramedics with him.”

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The suspect is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and drug driving.

Daniel, from Telford, said he felt like he was in “hell” as he rushed back to find Sheree.

“I had to carry her up the road with four police officers holding her while she was screaming and crying. At that point, I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I could see the injuries to her leg,” he explained.

Sheree, 36, is recovering at Aintree University Hospital after suffering muscle tissue damage. Daniel has been allowed to return home with Teddy after he was assessed at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

“I feel a lot of emotions right now. Upset, angry, traumatised. A lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered.

To me, it just wasn’t handled properly – the situation with the car getting that far into the crowd, in my opinion, he should not have got anywhere near us.”

Merseyside Police have now been given more time to question a 53-year-old arrested after a car struck a crowd at Liverpool FC’s victory parade on Monday.

The suspect, who police have described as a white British man from the local area, is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving, and drug driving.

Police have said the extra time they have been given to question the suspect runs into Thursday.

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Politics

Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

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Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

Bilal Bin Saqib, head of Pakistan’s crypto council, announced on May 28 that the country is moving to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Speaking at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Saqib said the government of Pakistan followed the United States’ lead in establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve and is embracing pro-crypto regulatory policies. The government official told the audience:

“Today is a very historic day. Today, I announce the Pakistani government is setting up its own government-led Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and we want to thank the United States of America again because we were inspired by them.”

The announcement represents a significant departure from the government of Pakistan’s previous stance on cryptocurrencies, holding that crypto would never be legal in the country.

Pakistan’s shift reflects the broader trend of nation-states adopting pro-crypto policies following the regulatory shift in Washington, DC under the President Donald Trump administration.

Government, Bitcoin Reserve, Bitcoin2025
Bilal Bin Saqib at the Bitcoin 2025 conference announcing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Source: Cointelegraph

Related: Pakistan appoints special assistant to PM on blockchain and crypto

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