Another bank jumps on the 5-day RTO train

• The boutique investment bank Moelis is ending work-from-home flexibility.
• In a departure from its COVID-era policy, it's calling employees back to the office full-time.
• The new five-day-per-week rule goes into effect in May.

Moelis & Co. is ending hybrid work and requiring employees to return to the office five days a week, joining a growing number of Wall Street firms rolling back remote work policies that took hold during the pandemic.

The investment bank is calling workers back as Wall Street's dreams of a dealmaking rebound stall amid growing economic uncertainty under President Donald Trump, putting some hiring plans in question, as Business Insider previously reported.

The five-day RTO mandate will take effect in May and apply to the firm's roughly 1,300 employees, a spokesperson told BI. The firm's return-to-office request was first reported by Financial News.

Moelis previously allowed staff to work from home two days a week. Other companies that have called workers back to the office Monday through Friday in recent months include JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, and AT&T.

In the early days of the pandemic, CEO Ken Moelis extolled the virtues of remote work.

"I want to attract, I want to motivate and I want to retain the greatest talent in the world," Moelis said in late 2020. "If that talent wants to do it in Florida, that's where we'll support them.

Efforts to return to prepandemic norms have fomented tensions in some corners of Wall Street, especially among technology and other so-called back-office workers, who are less likely to interface with clients. Some JPMorgan Chase workers, for example, have threatened to look for other work or unionize in response to the bank's recent five-day RTO mandate.

Moelis' WFH demands come as Wall Street faces a revenue-threatening about-face in demand for its core business of advising on M&As and IPOs. After years of sluggish deal activity, many bank leaders had predicted a dealmaking renaissance under Trump's second term.

Instead, they've watched global demand for mergers sputter as investors and strategic buyers metabolize a series of convulsions — from tariff threats to geopolitical tensions — that have roiled the stock market and poured cold water on Wall Street's buying impulses.

According to the London Stock Exchange Group's most recent investment banking scorecard, published earlier this month, US mergers and acquisitions amounted to nearly $271 billion since the start of the year — down 24% compared to the same time period in 2024.

Moelis himself has warned that bankers who are too dependent on M&A transactions could soon become dinosaurs. Indeed, he said last year that the boutique bank, which has made a name for itself as a merger advisor, would start to position its bankers to handle other kinds of capital markets and lending activities that generate big fee returns.

Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider. He can be reached via email at ralexander@businessinsider.com, or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.