JPMorgan and Bank of America want to reduce overtime – after the death of Leo Lukenas, who worked 100 hours a week

Two of Wall Street's biggest banks are reportedly planning to drastically limit the number of hours junior bankers can work per week, a reaction that led to the tragic death of a 35-year-old Bank of America employee who worked 100 hours a week.

Bank of America – which came under scrutiny after its employee and former Green Beret Leo Lukenas III suffered a fatal heart attack in May – is rolling out a new time-tracking tool that will require junior bankers to report what they spend their time on, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

According to The Journal, JPMorgan will limit junior bankers' working hours to 80 hours per week – the first limit introduced by the country's largest bank. Exceptions will be made in certain cases, such as live deals.

The moves came after the Journal published a comprehensive exposé detailing how Bank of America executives told subordinates to lie about their long work hours, even when they exceeded the 80-hour limit put in place more than a decade ago after the death of an overworked intern.

Bank of America's new time-tracking tool, which the bank said was developed before Lukenas' death on May 2, is expected to go live next week, the Journal reported.

The software requires junior investment bankers in the US to log their working hours daily rather than weekly.

The junior bankers are also required to specify which deals they will work on and when, and which managers they will supervise, the Journal reported.

Junior bankers will in future be able to rate on a scale of 1 to 4 how much capacity they have for more work, the newspaper says.

The Post has contacted Bank of America for comment.

For years, junior bankers at JPMorgan have had to enter their own working hours on timesheets and are guaranteed a weekend off every three months. They are also not allowed to be called in to work from 6 p.m. on Friday until noon on Saturday.

According to The Journal, senior bank officials have been communicating the new guidelines to their coworkers in recent weeks. The new weekly cap is equivalent to the work-hour limit for physician assistants in New York state.

When asked by The Post, JPMorgan declined to comment.

In May, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the nation's largest bank was asking “what can we learn” from Lukenas' death.

The married father of two young children died of what medical examiners diagnosed as acute coronary thrombosis, days after working on a team that completed a $2 billion merger.

As the Post previously reported, Lukenas was looking for a new job shortly before his death because the hard work he had to do for at least 16 hours a day was too exhausting.

Although there is no direct evidence that his work had anything to do with his death, numerous studies have established a link between acute stress and thrombosis.

“We are very saddened by the loss of our teammate. We remain focused on doing everything we can to support the family and our team, especially those who worked closely with him,” the BoA spokesperson told the Post at the time.

The bank introduced an 80-hour working hour limit in 2013 following the death of Moritz Erhardt, a 21-year-old intern at its London office. He died after working until 6am for three nights in a row.

However, the Journal's investigation found that junior employees regularly exceeded salary caps and were instructed to lie to their superiors about excessive workloads.

Several employees complained to the Journal about grueling work schedules that led to health problems and hospitalizations for a range of stress-related illnesses.

A Bank of America spokesperson told the Journal: “Our practices are clear and we expect all employees, including managers, to adhere to them. When we became aware of violations, disciplinary action has been taken.”

Two weeks after Lukena's death, another Bank of America trader in London, 25-year-old Adnan Deumic, died suddenly after collapsing at a charity football match two weeks later.

The cause of death was suspected to be cardiac arrest.