Morning Coffee: Bank of America hired all kinds of new M&A MDs, but some special old ones are leaving. Millennium loves Anthropic

Bank of America's investment bank has transformed itself into a hiring magnet. But while it attracts tens of new managing directors (MDs) in M&A, some of its most prized existing bankers are slipping out the door. 

Speaking yesterday, Matthew Koder, the now-longstanding head of Bank of America's global corporate and investment bank, said the bank has added "more than 40 new managing directors" this year. Those figures are presumably global, but in July alone BofA made nine "senior hires" for its 200 person US middle market banking team and proclaimed that it discerned a "significant opportunity" in that area. 

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It seems unfortunate, then, that the person who made that proclamation is now leaving. Reuters reported yesterday that Mike Joo, BofA's co-head of investment banking, is leaving for an unspecified external opportunity. 

Joo had spent 20 years at BofA and was named co-head of M&A with Faiz Ahmad only last August. The BofA memo announcing Joo's appointment in August 2025 said he would continue to prioritize BofA's middle market clients. Ahmad seemed more oriented internationally.

Joo isn't the only slippage. Also this week, BofA lost Amy Lissauer, its prized activist defence banker, who will soon be joining JPMorgan. Lissauer, who joined BofA from Evercore in 2019, had built its activist defence business into one of the best. 

BofA has also lost an array of other less meaty senior bankers, including Ed Liu, who is joining Deutsche as head of TMT banking (and who also resigned this week), and Rohan Sen, who's going to Citi. 

What is occurring? Maybe nothing at all. It's a busy year for M&A and it's not unusual for M&A bankers to be wooed by rival banks. It's also worth noting, though, that there were years recently when Bank of America didn't seem to hire many new managing directors (MDs) for its US investment bank. In 2024, for example, it seemed to lose a lot of banking MDs in America without hiring many replacements. In 2025, it made a few more hires, but not loads. This year's 40 new hires seem a lot in comparison. They include the likes of Jason Rowe, from Goldman Sachs who is BofA's new head of technology banking, and Gary Kirkham, who left to become a partner at Centerview in 2021, but is now back in the fold.

With Joo gone, BofA's M&A business is now run by Ahmad, who has an eclectic past in transaction services, high yield, structured finance and commodities trading. Ahmad will be assisted by Karim Assef, a BofA veteran of 30 years who has not left and is the chair of global investment banking.

Separately, if you really love Anthropic, you might get privileged access to frontier models and that would be a fine thing.

Millennium really loves Anthropic. Bloomberg reports that the hedge fund is collaborating with Anthropic as part of its AI lab and that the two are working together to build a "digital risk analyst." This analyst, which is described as a "tool" rather than as a colleague, will reportedly assist Millennium's humans to make decisions and extract risk insights across asset classes. 

Millennium's enthusiasm for Anthropic is not restricted to risk. It's reportedly also using Anthropic's products to write software, build products and improve workflows.

Given that Millennium is increasingly ingesting other hedge funds by virtue of its large pool of capital and advanced back office and trading systems, integrating Anthropic's solutions might help it cut costs. As we noted yesterday, Jain Global's operations staff have reportedly been guaranteed compensation until the end of 2026. Maybe Anthropic will replace them after that?

Meanwhile...

Javier Velazquez left Millennium in London to found hedge fund Albar in 2018. Millennium gave him initial capital. Now he's returning external clients' cash and managing money entirely for Millennium after generating returns of only 1.1% so far this year. (Bloomberg) 

Jane Street is shifting its $11bn in debt to investors including Pimco Private in a credit deal that will allow it to make further investments in AI while also reducing its need to keep disclosing financials to its debt holders. Borrowing privately usually costs at least 0.25 percentage points more. (Financial Times) 

Hackers devised websites aimed at stealing passwords from employees of private equity firms and companies including Blackstone, Bridgewater Associates, Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, KKR, TPG, CME Group and Moody's. (Reuters)

The new hacking nightmare for financial services firms. “Before they could attack 50 entities in a targeted attack, now they can do 1,00. Hackers can also listen into a phone call and mimic the voice, tone and phrasings of the speakers to create fake calls.” (Bloomberg) 

America is offering to print dollars to buy yen. It’s not quite quantitative easing. The Federal Reserve lends Japan money in return for temporary ownership of Treasurys in repurchase agreements, rather than outright buying the Treasurys. But like QE it expands the Fed balance sheet and pumps billions of dollars into the economy. (WSJ) 

Hedge funds in Florida keep hiring PhDs. (Kronor Group) 

First you take Ozempic, then you get "Ozempic face", then you have to inject fat to look normal again. (Bloomberg) 

Established” LinkedIn users (100+ connections) who made retroactive edits to the description of jobs they’d already left between 2020 and 2026 tended to play up how much they used artificial intelligence tools in previous roles, while de-emphasising DEI. (Financial Times) 

Leopold Aschenbrenner's new $400m investment is in an unnamed company backed by Sequoia Capital. Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia, likes Leopold. He says: “He’s really good. He’s going to be around.” (Bloomberg) 

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