Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a ruthless beast. The pressure is a chokehold, the hours a meat grinder, and the stakes tower over you like a skyscraper ready to collapse. If you’re in the trenches—buy-side, sell-side, doesn’t matter—deals don’t come together in tidy spreadsheets. They’re clawed out of chaos: war rooms thick with tension, 2 a.m. calls that won’t quit, negotiations that feel like bare-knuckle brawls.
Every number’s triple-checked, every contract dissected. But there’s a wound festering under it all—one the industry’s ignored for decades: the mental health and well-being of the people holding it together.
Ten years ago, we shrugged it off as the cost of the game. Today, that excuse doesn’t cut it—and the death of Carter McIntosh proves it’s time to stop romanticizing the grind.
M&A is a gauntlet, and everyone knows it. Deadlines strangle you, diligence drops like an anvil at the eleventh hour, and deal docs get shredded and rebuilt while the clock ticks past midnight.
Bankers used to flex about it—100-hour weeks were a badge of honor, a rite of passage. But that was then. Now, we see the cracks.
🔹 Decision fatigue isn’t just a term—it’s a slow rot. When you’re strung out, you screw up: a misplaced decimal, a shaky call in the heat of a bid, a foggy brain missing the fine print. In M&A, that’s not a whoopsie—that’s a deal-ender.
🔹 A team running on fumes isn’t just inefficient—it’s a liability. A burned-out analyst can tank a process. A sluggish VP delays execution. Stress poisons the air, tempers snap, and the whole operation staggers.
🔹 Retention risk is real. Juniors flee to private equity for better hours, and seniors start questioning if another all-nighter is worth the payout. The talent drain isn’t hypothetical—it’s happening.
And clients feel it. Slow response times, half-baked execution, a dulled negotiating edge—when investment bankers are running on fumes, deals suffer.
This isn’t about being soft. It’s about money.
M&A is about maximizing value, but sticking to the old "suck it up" mentality is bleeding firms dry in ways they don’t even quantify.
💸 Exhaustion kills execution. When teams are overworked, precision drops, errors creep in, and momentum slows. A tired banker costs the firm more than a fresh one.
💸 Turnover is a silent cash drain. Replacing a burned-out banker isn’t a quick fix—it’s a costly recruitment cycle, especially in a market where the sharpest minds know they have options.
💸 Reputational damage is real. A firm with a reputation for grinding its juniors to dust struggles to attract top talent—and in M&A, reputation is leverage.
Jefferies is a neon sign of what’s at stake. Analysts hammering CIMs in two weeks, clocking out at 4 a.m.—it’s a system that’s chewing through people, and when people break, so do deals.
That’s not “paying your dues”—it’s a business model on the brink.
Carter McIntosh’s death isn’t just a tragedy—it’s a reckoning.
🔺 Age: 28.
🔺 Firm: Jefferies, Tech M&A.
🔺 Previous Roles: Moelis & Goldman Sachs.
🔺 Found Dead: January 27, 2025, in his Dallas apartment.
The cause? “Unexplained” as of February 24, 2025. But anyone in the industry knows what kind of culture he was in—where rest was mocked, bonuses were clawed back for quitting, and grinding yourself down was just part of the job.
McIntosh wasn’t new to the game. He had survived Moelis, Goldman, and the brutal Jefferies TMT pressure cooker. But the system chewed him up anyway.
His death is a gut punch to an industry that has been warned for years.
📊 Two-thirds of finance professionals struggle with mental health issues tied to work.
📊 M&A is ground zero for stress, anxiety, and burnout.
A decade ago, we called it hustle. Now, it’s a crisis.
We can’t keep running M&A like it’s 2015.
The human cost is unbearable. The financial cost is real. The industry needs to evolve.
👉 Mandatory mental health screenings—not as a side perk, but as a structural necessity.
👉 Make burnout a measured KPI, just like deal velocity and revenue.
👉 Hard limits on hours. JPMorgan has capped juniors at 80-hour weeks—not perfect, but better.
👉 Mandate recovery time between deals—it’s not a weakness, it’s performance optimization.
👉 Real support, not lip service—counseling, financial incentives for wellness, firm-wide resources.
👉 Evercore’s Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are a start—scale them.
👉 Senior bankers need to set the tone. If MDs and VPs never take a break, juniors won’t either.
👉 Make mental health a leadership discussion, not just an HR memo.
Mental health in M&A isn’t a footnote—it’s the undercurrent that can sink or save a deal.
Wall Street war stories of 100-hour weeks and brutal all-nighters don’t fly anymore. Burnout isn’t a badge of honor—it’s a wrecking ball, smashing talent, torching precision, bleeding value.
Carter McIntosh’s death, layered over years of ignored warnings, screams for change.
M&A firms have a choice: Adapt and protect their teams—or keep grinding until the next tragedy forces their hand.
Because the next deal, and the people behind it, deserve better.