• JPMorgan promoted 135 executives in global banking and markets to the rank of managing director.
• Two of the bankers previously made Business Insider's Rising Stars of Wall Street list.
• Here's what the newly minted MDs told us last year about their careers at the bank.

JPMorgan announced its newest class of managing directors earlier this week, elevating hundreds of employees across divisions to the firm's highest title outside the C-suite.

The bank promoted 135 people in its global banking and markets, and two of the investment bankers made Business Insider's Rising Stars of Wall Street list last October, which tracks some of the most impressive up-and-coming dealmakers and investors.

Here's what they told us last year about their now even more distinguished careers.

Florian Plath

Florian Plath, who was 34 when he made Business Insider's list, started at JPMorgan as an intern in the London office, and now works with leading technology clients in its mergers and acquisitions group. He's advised on various multibillion-dollar transactions, including Altair's $10.6 billion sale to Siemens, Maxim Integrated's $29 billion all-stock merger with Analog Devices, and Broadcom's $90 billion acquisition of VMware, one of the biggest tech acquisitions to date.

Plath said there's a common thread between some of the biggest deals he's worked on: teams must mobilize quickly and solve problems in a dynamic, fast-moving market.

Plath is from Germany and based in San Francisco, but has studied in Asia and lived in London. He said his international upbringing and experiences have "further sparked my interest in global markets."

The newly minted managing director told Business Insider he's an avid runner, enjoys golf and tennis, and believes sports keep him grounded in a high-pressure field.

"For me, it has always been a team sport," he said of his job, "doing what's right for our clients, the firm, and the employees."

Jack Levendoski

Jack Levendoski is also a banker in JPMorgan's mergers and acquisitions group, and similarly focuses on technology transactions. He's worked on Twitter's $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, the $21 billion merger of World Wrestling Entertainment and UFC, and Palo Alto Networks' $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk.

Levendoski, who was 35 when he last talked to Business Insider, moved often growing up, partly because of his dad's job in the oil and gas industry. He lived in Louisiana, London, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Australia, and said the experience helped him learn to adapt quickly and appreciate diverse viewpoints. He's used that flexibility when advising on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of deals.

Many of those deals had touched on AI when Levendoski last spoke to Business Insider. Being an early adopter of the technology has given him "quick answers to hard questions that perhaps before required significant research," he said.

Levendoski joined JPMorgan in 2016, after starting his career as a facilities engineering project manager at Chevron. He's keen to mentor others, just as people mentored him: "I saw the value that it created for me, and so I've tried to play that forward."

• JPMorgan software developers say the bank is raising its expectations for AI use.
• Internal company communications reveal the bank's new AI targets.
• The updated objectives affect members of its global developer workforce.

JPMorgan Chase's message to its global armada of software developers is clear: embrace AI or risk falling behind.

Internal company documents seen by Business Insider and posted to JPMorgan's intranet for employees lay out a series of new expectations for the bank's software engineering workforce, who comprise the majority of its 65,000-person-strong Global Technology division. The newly listed objectives, published on the intranet earlier this month, say all software and security engineers are expected to "drive excellence" by adopting AI and "contributing to initiatives that improve productivity, speed, scalability, and impact."

One document authored by the bank's human resources leaders laid out two core objectives for software engineers: step up their coding game, and start harnessing AI to save time and get more done. The new language about objectives "will be added automatically and will appear by the end of March," an image of the document on the intranet showed — a reference to upcoming changes to employees' goals expected to take effect at the end of this month. The firm also instructed workers to develop clear goals with their managers that align with the bank's new objectives.

"Demonstrate measurable improvement in code quality, speed and productivity through regular use of approved AI coding assist tools, contributing to the team's overall efficiency targets," read one goal written by HR. "Engage in identifying, implementing and optimizing AI-driven automation opportunities within technology lifecycle management (TLM) processes to drive efficiency and support capacity unlock initiatives, ensuring all enhancements leverage current technology assets before considering new solutions."

A spokeswoman for JPMorgan declined to comment.

JPMorgan is among Wall Street's biggest spenders on technology and artificial intelligence, with projected tech investments reaching roughly $20 billion in 2026 — far exceeding peers like Goldman Sachs. Across corporate America, companies including Meta and Google have begun pushing employees to adopt AI tools and, in some cases, evaluating their use.

Business Insider spoke to five engineers across the bank who said the push to adopt AI has been felt far and wide — in managerial conversations, in intranet posts, and through dashboards that display who's using certain AI tools, and who's not. They added that discussions about productivity and AI adoption have become more frequent in recent weeks. It all comes as developers get ready for a pilot of Anthropic's Claude Code to be rolled out as soon as April, said a longtime IT developer in the Global Technology group. Claude Code would be made available alongside the four other large language models coders are already using: two from OpenAI's ChatGPT, and two from Anthropic's Claude.

'Anxiety' among developers

The developers Business Insider spoke to said they've been encouraged to use AI tools for a wide range of tasks, from writing code to preparing presentations. One dashboard that tracked adoption and usage of the bank's GitHub Copilot appeared to show details as granular as which employees had installed it and identified individuals as "light," "heavy," or "non" users.

For some, the message has added pressure inside a firm that has drawn scrutiny in recent years for its use of internal monitoring tools and performance tracking. Business Insider published a series of reports on the firm's Workforce Activity Data Utility in 2022, a program that collected data points about how employees were spending their day — from the length of video calls to how long they spent drafting emails to where they were sitting in the office.

"There's a lot of anxiety in the environment right now," the longtime IT developer said. Those who don't use AI risk being seen as underperforming, the developer said. Another developer said their manager said in a recent meeting that availability of the new AI tools comes with an "expectation" that velocity and output should show "a noticeable increase" quarter over quarter.

Three of the five developers Business Insider spoke to said the tools are helpful, despite discomfort over the tracking.

New performance dimensions

The updated guidance on AI use comes as the bank implements other adjustments to how it ranks workers' success on the job. Going forward, the bank said on the intranet portal, it's streamlining some of the primary "dimensions" it uses to grade employees, pivoting to using two categories: "what you achieve" — business outcomes — and "how you achieve it," including adherence to the firm's behavioral principles.

According to screenshots from the bank's intranet, JPMorgan will segment workers into three buckets: "stand out" for those who exceed job standards, "achiever" for the majority of employees, and "needs improvement" for those who require "additional support" and have struggled to perform consistently.

Another page Business Insider reviewed listed skills non-managers working in software engineering were expected to display across "all performance dimensions." One is "Data Fluency," noting that the skill is applied by those who develop and drive "adoption of new tools or methodologies to leverage data in the flow of work." "Rate of adoption" is cited as one measurement of the employee's impact toward exhibiting the skill in practice.

The documents from the JPMorgan intranet echo the firm's long-standing culture of internal monitoring and data collection, making clear that continuous performance tracking is vital for keeping workers on target throughout the year.

"You and your manager will use your objectives to track your progress during the year, recognize impact, and streamline your annual review," the firm wrote on an internal page tied to goals.

Have a tip? Contact these reporters via email at ralexander@businessinsider.com or SMS/Signal at 561-247-5758 or atecotzky@insider.com or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Jamie Dimon said he remains optimistic about the future of the Middle East, despite the war in Iran.
• The JPMorgan CEO said surrounding countries are all aligned in wanting peace.
• He tied peace to foreign investment in the region, where certain cities have become financial hubs.

While the war in Iran poses short-term risks because of its uncertainty, Jamie Dimon thinks the conflict might ultimately create more long-term peace.

The JPMorgan CEO said on Tuesday that he remains optimistic about the region's future, despite the war in Iran.

"Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, America, Israel, all want permanent peace in the Middle East," he said at the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, DC, adding that Israel should do more toward beginning to set up a "rational" Palestinian state. He said that the countries' attitudes toward peace have evolved over the past decades.

Investment, he said, is a key driver.

"You know what they all want, too, when you go there? Foreign direct investment. There's a lot of foreign direct investment going there, but it won't go there if things like this are taking place," he said. "So I think they realize they need permanent peace."

Major cities in the UAE, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, have emerged as financial hubs in recent years, attracting investors.

"They can't have neighbors lobbing ballistic missiles into their data centers, thinking that people would put $10 billion in a data center," he added.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he'd had "productive conversations" with Iran about ending the war, sending stocks soaring, but Iranian state media denied that the talks had taken place. Some market pros have said there might not be an easy off-ramp for the conflict.

Data centers, a growing focus of global investment, have also become targets in the war, now well into its third week. Amazon said that drone strikes had damaged three of its data centers in the region earlier this month.

"Data centers have become the new infrastructure for economies," James Lewis, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider in early March. "If you think about how people are going to build infrastructure, before it was railroads and steam engines. Now it's data centers and fiber optics."

• Ryan Lake and Stephen Rooney lead JPMorgan's beverage banking business.
• Beverage M&A is expected to rebound, and they said big brands want to capitalize on the wellness boom.
• The bankers broke down where they turn to spot regional trends and the advice they're giving CEOs.

When Ryan Lake and Stephen Rooney scan a bar menu, they might spot a drink they once evaluated — or helped sell.

The JPMorgan bankers cover the beverage industry, talking to everyone from executives to beer distributors to lawyers to retailers to figure out where consumer tastes are headed.

After a slowdown last year, partly due to tariffs, the pair is prepping to leverage that expertise as beverage M&A is expected to rebound in 2026, according to the investment bank Capstone Partners.

"There's been so much activity in the smaller space — bigger players buying smaller brands that are higher growth, maybe more health and wellness focused," Rooney said.

Lake, who joined JPMorgan in September and is based in Arizona, has covered beverages for more than 20 years and now focuses on mid-cap and fast-growing insurgent brands. In his previous role at Arlington Capital, he advised Stone Brewing on its $165 million sale to Sapporo. New York-based Rooney, who focuses on large-cap brands like Pepsi and is a leader on the investment bank's consumer and retail team, has spent nearly 15 years in the sector. He recently advised Alani Nu, an energy drink brand, on its $1.8 billion sale to Celsius, a deal that helped Celsius diversify its portfolio and reach more women.

Their partnership fits into JPMorgan's middle market banking push, working with a team of nearly 300 bankers across the company focused on founder-run companies rooted in local economies. Business Insider spoke with Lake and Rooney about opportunities in the beverage sector and the advice they're giving CEOs.

Large companies are eager for growth and increasingly turning to acquisitions to expand into new categories, price points, and geographies, the bankers said. That requires them to collaborate closely, since together they share insight across the market.

Spotting the next trend

The pair relies on what Lake calls an "early radar system," built on continuous communication with an ecosystem of companies, buyers, and investors. They might, for example, be able to spot a hot regional brand before it blows up on a national scale.

In a small, tightly knit industry with high barriers to entry — from dense liquor laws to understanding the cost of shipping water — relationships are crucial.

"If you do things the right way, it's a massive accelerator, because people will give you good referrals and talk well about you," Lake said. "If you do things the wrong way, everyone knows who you are pretty quickly."

Right now, large and small brands are trying to cash in on the boom in functional beverages, whether that's in the form of energy drinks or protein shakes. But Lake said that trends shift quickly, and today's protein maxxing could give way to something else, like a fiber craze.

Even so, he and Rooney caution clients against chasing every single trend, and often talk about staying focused. While M&A can drive growth, exploring too many options can risk losing or diluting a brand's identity.

Gen Z's drinking isn't so simple

If health drinks are having their moment, alcohol is struggling — but some of the issues may be overstated, Lake said.

Gen Z and those on GLP-1s are often cited as drinking less, and the rise in GLP, though the bankers said the reality is more complicated. Some Gen Z consumers are under 21, and those who can legally drink might be financially strapped.

"You're paying out the arm and the leg for housing and healthcare and for fuel — it's hard to actually go out and drink when you don't have the money for it," he said, adding that it could be years before we know whether alcohol is in a structural decline.

Just as the long-term alcohol trends are unclear, the beverage sector generally is as volatile as consumer tastes, which Lake and Rooney said can make it especially exciting. They've started lending to a company doing $5 million in revenue, only to watch it grow into a brand worth hundreds of millions.

"You do see that sort of meteoric rise of companies, because of the ever-changing consumer demand," he said.