• New York health regulators say Tiger Medical smuggled alloClae into the state and lied about it.
• A court filing includes photos of boxes piled in the driveway of a New Jersey nurse who regulators allege drove the product to NYC.
• Tiger says only the FDA, not New York State, can regulate alloClae, and denied wrongdoing.

On a blustery December day, nine large white cardboard boxes sat stacked next to a garbage can in the driveway of a New Jersey nurse as a man packed them into the bed of a pickup truck.

Other than a manufacturer's label in the corner and a note that the contents were perishable and shouldn't be frozen, there was no indication they held thousands of dollars' worth of processed cadaver fat. Inside the boxes, state regulators allege, was alloClae, a hot new injectable filler derived from the fat of dead people and headed to high-end cosmetic surgeon practices in New York City.

Photos of the boxes were part of a recent court filing by New York State health officials, who have accused Tiger Medical Holdings, which manufactures and sells alloClae with its affiliates, of "smuggling" the product into New York.

Tiger has said only the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate alloClae, and that FDA rules don't require premarket approval. New York is one of a handful of states that issues permission to store and distribute human tissue, and it claims that Tiger violated those rules by bringing alloClae to market without waiting for approval.

Recent court filings reveal that the state obtained FedEx records, including photos, in an attempt to prove that Tiger organized a scheme to smuggle hundreds of boxes of the product — possibly over $1 million worth — into New York.

The dispute could affect the availability of a product that lets busy C-suiters get a boob job during a lunch break or a butt lift between meetings. Doctors have said the injectable is flying off the shelves, and some have continued to administer it during the state investigation.

Tiger co-CEO Oliver Burckhardt said in a filing on Wednesday that 60 doctors have contacted the company about the fat spat with New York — some worried about the case, but most wanting to buy more alloClae.

Tiger hasn't disputed shipping alloClae through New Jersey, though it has called the state's evidence "unreliable" and "self-serving," and said the allegation of "smuggling" is baseless and inflammatory.

It said the health department kept asking for more information without signaling concerns until last month, and that the company submitted testing data as recently as January to show that alloClae was safe.

Tiger's lawyer, Larry Wood Jr., did not address specific questions from Business Insider, referring a reporter to Tiger's court filings.

Building buzz for alloClae while dealing with regulators

AlloClae hit the market in 2024. It didn't take long for plastic surgeons on Manhattan's Tribeca and Upper East Side to realize the appeal. Their patients wanted a quick touch-up and were willing to pay for the convenience. In small quantities, the product can be injected for under $10,000; in other cases, it can cost up to $100,000 per procedure.

The product is a good fit for "the CEOs, COOs, CCOs that don't want to be away from the boardroom," Douglas Steinbrech, who practices in New York City, Beverly Hills, and Chicago, told Business Insider last year. "They have to go to a lot of meetings that just pop up, and they cannot control when they're going to happen. They can't just clear their schedule to recover for a surgery."

AlloClae was advertised on social media and websites: "Revolutionary," said one clinic. "Pure Gold. On Demand," said another.

In a video posted by a Texas plastic surgery practice, audio of Oprah gifting cars to a screaming audience was dubbed over a man in scrubs pretending to dole out alloClae boxes to employees who wriggled with excitement.

Tiger, which is privately held, said this month that alloClae is experiencing "rapid growth" and the company plans to build a 200-person sales force by the end of 2027 to sell alloClae and a similar product in development, dermaClae, to surgeons, med spas, and other buyers.

When Business Insider spoke to Tiger Aesthetics at the end of last year, the company said it was struggling to keep up with demand. Behind the scenes, it was grappling with more than a shortage.

The company was engaged in a back-and-forth with New York's health department. Between October 2024 and May 2025, the agency sent three letters saying that it could not grant Tiger permission to distribute alloClae in the state.

In July 2025, a health inspector visited two Tiger tissue facilities in Pennsylvania and asked why New York doctors were advertising alloClae. Monica Garcia, the COO of Tiger Aesthetic's parent company, said she was unaware of any shipments to the state and asked what the consequences would be if there were, according to a sworn statement from Joseph Giovannetti, the agency's top investigator.

Garcia, in a sworn statement, said the exchange took place at a Tiger affiliate where employees familiar with alloClae weren't present. She said the inspector didn't ask for follow-up information about alloClae distribution to New York, disputing one of Giovannetti's claims.

Giovannetti said the inspection prompted Tiger to stop shipping alloClae directly to New York and start going through New Jersey and Connecticut.

Despite the letters and inspection, Caroline Van Hove, the president of Tiger Medical Holdings affiliate Tiger Aesthetics, provided reassurances about alloClae to at least one New York plastic surgeon. "We can confirm that the New York Department of Health has not reached out to us in connection with our alloClae product," she wrote in an April 2026 letter seen by Business Insider.

Boxes of alloClae were piled up in a New Jersey driveway

Every week or two, starting no later than September 2025, a new set of white boxes would appear at the clapboard, shuttered home of Robert McGee, a nurse who lived on a cul-de-sac in the central New Jersey town of Tinton Falls, according to FedEx records and a state investigator's statement.

The boxes of alloClae would be stacked next to duffle bags and trash cans in McGee's driveway or on his front porch, according to delivery photos and Giovannetti.

Between September 2025 and April 2026, the company sent over 330 boxes of alloClae to McGee, who loaded them in his pickup, drove them the 50 miles into Manhattan, and dropped them off at more than three dozen plastic surgeons and med spas, Giovannetti said.

McGee did not respond to requests for comment.

In January 2026, the state said in a filing that an unidentified "whistleblower" told regulators what was happening. Three months later, health investigators made an "unannounced inspection" at the office of Dr. Adam Schaffner, a Manhattan plastic surgeon.

Schaffner's paper trail laid out a shift in Tiger's shipping processes. Invoices from July 2025 showed Tiger had sent alloClae directly to his Fifth Avenue office. But starting in August, the month after the inspection, the products were mailed to homes and offices in New Jersey and Connecticut, and employees or Ubers would courier them across state lines, the health department said.

Schaffner, who declined to comment, received at least $95,000 worth of alloClae initially shipped to addresses outside of New York, according to invoices filed in court records.

Some boxes went to the New York City office of plastic surgeon Matthew Schulman, the FedEx records show. In a YouTube video posted last fall, he gleefully unpacked 287.5 cubic centimeters of alloClae as the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" played in the background. Schulman's name, with McGee's home address, was visible on a shipping label.

If Schulman's boxes were typical — as a review of more than a dozen plastic surgeons' unboxing videos on Instagram suggests — a total of 15,840 cubic centimeters of alloClae could have been sent via McGee's home. The prices on 11 of Schaffner's invoices filed in court average $86.29 per cubic centimeter; at that price, more than $1.3 million worth of alloClae could have been shipped through McGee.

Schulman did not respond to requests for comment.

Tiger has asked that the state's allegations be struck from the court record because, among other things, they argue, the health department could be cherry-picking from its investigative file to benefit their case.

Some New York surgeons are still using alloClae

Doctors who received alloClae say they ordered the product from Tiger and didn't know the route it took.

"He had no idea that this was a challenge, or how stuff was showing up, or any of that," said Ken Sterling, an attorney for Dr. Jason Emer. Sterling said Emer has not been contacted by medical authorities.

Samira Shamoon, a publicist for Dr. Darren Smith, said in an email that "when Dr. Smith was using AlloClae, he purchased it directly from the company and had no knowledge of irregularities." Smith is no longer offering the product, she said.

ME Plastic Surgery, which has locations on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and in Queens, recently updated a blog post to say that it is not offering alloClae.

Several New York doctors said in early June that they're still using alloClae. Tiger has said it's suspending distribution to New York, but the product can still be "legally sold." In the meantime, doctors in the state continue to promote it.

Emer posted an Instagram video on June 12 showing himself injecting alloClae into a patient's buttocks.

"Don't be left behind," the caption reads, along with a peach emoji. The geotag: New York City.

• Jamie Dimon said he'll probably hire "more AI people" and "less bankers" in the future.
• The JPMorgan CEO said the bank is in the early innings of using the fast-moving technology.
• He also said a fellow bank CEO's controversial statements about AI job losses were "inartful."

The future of the nation's biggest bank might mean fewer bankers.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that AI will impact "every job," and change the balance of his more than 300,000-person workforce in an interview with Bloomberg that aired on Wednesday.

"I think it'll reduce some of our jobs down the road," he said. "I think we'll be hiring more AI people and probably less bankers in certain categories."

He agreed that AI efficiencies will lead to downsizing when asked, but said that similar patterns have been happening throughout his life. Dimon said that JPMorgan sees about 10% attrition each year, equivalent to around 30,000 people, and the bank is prepared to reskill them, give them new jobs, and potentially offer early retirement. During the company's investor day in February, he said that they already have "huge redeployment plans."

"We can take people who are displaced — and we have displaced people from AI — and we offered them other jobs," he said at the event.

During Wednesday's interview, Dimon said that JPMorgan is using AI for everything from risk to marketing to coding, and that's just "the tip of the iceberg" as the technology rapidly accelerates. The bank has a $20 billion technology budget and already keeps careful tabs on how its engineers use AI.

Aside from numbers, the very nature of banking is already changing, as startups like Rogo and Hebbia automate some of the grunt work that previously defined junior roles. Anthropic recently rolled out a suite of AI agents for the financial sector, including ones for building notoriously tedious pitch decks and models.

Dimon also addressed Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters' controversial comments about AI-related job losses. Winters described his planned reduction in support staff as "replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment we're putting in." In the wake of an online backlash, Winters clarified his language in an internal memo on Wednesday, writing that "where roles do fall away, it reflects changes in the work, not the value of our people."

Dimon called Winters, who spent 26 years at JPMorgan, a "friend," and said that we've all phrased things poorly.

"It was an inartful way to say something," Dimon said, before adding that AI will impact everyone, not just less-skilled employees.

When it comes to employee well-being beyond the office, Dimon said he urged the importance of keeping New York City competitive in a recent meeting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

"We went through that every city has to compete, and they have to compete at every level," Dimon said of his conversation with the mayor, who has recently faced criticism from much of the business community for singling out Citadel CEO Ken Griffin in a video.

Dimon said that the city's high taxes are "already" causing talent to leave, pointing to his own growing workforce in Texas.

• 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."

• Allison Sheehan ran a baking business while working in private wealth at Goldman Sachs.
• She left Goldman after she said the firm told her she couldn't keep her online brand.
• Now, she's using her Wall Street skills, like capital allocation, to scale her cake business.

This as-told-to is based on a conversation with Allison Sheehan, 26, a former analyst for private wealth at Goldman Sachs and student at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, where she's building her baking brand, Alleycat. Business Insider has verified her roles at Goldman and her current school enrollment. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Baking cakes started out as a college hobby — I'd make them for my sorority sisters and, once word got out, the broader Dallas community. When I landed a job in operations at Goldman Sachs in Utah, I stopped baking entirely, though I still longed to build up my cake empire. I had no family, no friends, no nothing in Utah, and was focused on getting transferred to New York.

I eventually got a job in the wealth management unit in New York. It was a part operational, since I was opening accounts and managing money, but also client-facing, which I loved.

As soon as I got to New York, I restarted my baking social media accounts, which had around 500 followers at the time, and announced that I was back in business. Orders picked up, but I didn't have time for all of them, so I capped it at three cakes a week, creating a scarcity model. I sold out weekly for about 6 months before expanding to up to 10 cakes.

That's when I started struggling to fit everything in, but I was getting good traction, making cakes for companies and fashion houses, like Goop. A typical day meant waking up at 5 am to frost a cake, going to the gym, going to work, baking a cake, going to dinner with friends, and going to sleep. I spent all my spare moments invoicing clients or editing videos. In 2023, my friend's boyfriend said I should post under the handle "investment__baker," but I was careful not to mention anything about where I worked or my exact job.

I learned valuable skills at Goldman

Goldman's high-stakes hustle culture has helped me build the brand — I had to be responsive, communicative, and accurate, all skills I use now. I always quickly consolidate my notes and immediately flag any concerns to product developers or suppliers. On the communication front, I'm able to connect people across the supply chain, from technical food scientists to more creative-minded brand designers. And when it comes to accuracy, I'm precise about costs, even on volatile products like cocoa, and margins.

In wealth management, I learned a lot about capital allocation, helping clients balance their portfolios and plan for expenses. But I learned just as much from my own failures.

After I started taking on more orders, I rented a commercial kitchen on the Lower East Side to bake and teach workshops. It solved logistical problems but drained my bank account. Every penny I made from baking went toward rent, and I eventually had to return to my apartment. That was definitely not a good capital allocation strategy, since it almost left me broke.

Goldman gave me an ultimatum

At that point, I knew I needed to go all in on my business and decided to apply to business school. Studying for the GRE while working and running the business was unsustainable.

My health deteriorated, and I broke down at work, having a panic attack and sobbing to my very understanding VP. I went home to Wisconsin for two weeks, shut down all of my social media accounts, and brought my brand to an awful, screeching halt.

Six months later, I reopened the account, with 2,000 fewer followers and almost no DMs. The momentum came back quickly, though, until, boom: Goldman's compliance team called me in and asked me to delete all of my content or leave the firm. They said the word "investment" on my social handles alluded to my job, and I had to delete everything. After finishing my business school interviews a few months later, I un-archived all of the content, got called in again, and quit.

I couldn't waste the five years of time and energy I'd poured into this business.

Goldman is still helping me now

I've scaled back my custom cake business and am focused on building my consumer packaged goods products: dry cake mixes and frosting, like the kind you can scoop out of the jar. I've finished the formulation, secured suppliers, and gotten my nutritional label approved, but I'm still struggling to find a manufacturer.

Small brands have to convince manufacturers they're a worthwhile investment. From their perspective, why spend time onboarding a tiny Instagram baker who could easily fail?

That's where Goldman has come in. Beyond knowing how to build a nice deck and balance a budget, my background at such a prestigious firm lends me credibility. It comes up in conversations, and I'll include it in presentations, since I'm proud to have worked there. The firm is relevant to my online brand, too, since I still post as the investment baker and share investing advice.

I'm making a fraction of my Goldman salary, but I'm fundamentally a creative person. I couldn't spend my life behind a desk. When I started, my goal was to make a cake for a celebrity, which I've done multiple times, including for Brooke Shields. Now, I want to bring home baking back — and revolutionize the grocery aisles.

• 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.

• Saul Van Beurden thinks employers and employees share responsibility for AI adoption.
• Wells Fargo doesn't mandate AI use; instead, it aims to generate "grassroots enthusiasm."
• Van Beurden said employees need new skills to stay competitive for both redeployment and new jobs.

Saul Van Beurden is the man helping Wells Fargo confront a question hanging over banks of every size: What happens to jobs in the age of AI?

He and his central team can't, and shouldn't, figure out what an AI-ready Wells Fargo looks like alone. The bank must teach employees skills to stay competitive in a changing industry, and they must choose to learn them, Van Beurden said.

"You cannot deny things," Van Beurden, who is the head of AI and the co-CEO of consumer banking and lending, told Business Insider. "But how do you make it a thing where everybody has a role to play and takes their own accountability and responsibility?"

The bank is leaning on AI literacy programs and demos, among other things, to hopefully inspire "grassroots enthusiasm." The goal is to make employees comfortable enough with the technology that they can be redeployed if their jobs change, or competitive in the job market if they leave Wells Fargo, he said. Wells Fargo doesn't mandate AI usage, even as it bets the technology will help supercharge its growth following the Federal Reserve's decision to lift a $1.95 trillion asset cap.

Van Beurden thinks that fluency starts outside the office. He's trying to build an agent to help pull documents for his 2026 tax returns, and believes it's crucial for employees to use AI in their personal lives, too.

"It's really important to have that personal usage, to understand the power of what it can do. And then we are enabling that and allowing that to happen at the workplace," he said.

Still, Van Beurden emphasized that everyone needs to "stay cognitive," since AI could generate all of our ideas if we let it. He suspects that most college students are comfortable with technology but should invest time in activities like reading or playing chess. Staying sharp, he thinks, will help them in what's broadly a brutal job market.

Wells' workforce, like many of its competitors, is already changing because of AI. The bank's CEO, Charlie Scharf, said in November that it will probably "have less head count as we look forward," and added in December that generative AI has already made engineers up to 35% more productive.

Van Beurden didn't say whether the bank would need 30% fewer engineers as a result or whether it would necessarily alter hiring, leaving it at, "it's a great question." Instead, he said that growth and head count aren't always one-to-one.

"How great is it to grow without the need to hire people, because you have created the capacity to take on more clients, to take on more customers with the same amount of people?" he said, calling AI the "ideal tool" for that growth. Wells Fargo recorded $21.3 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, up 4% year over year; revenue in its consumer bank, which Van Beurden oversees, rose 7% year over year.

The leaders of other big banks have also said that AI will likely eliminate some jobs and slow hiring, both publicly and in internal memos. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said his bank has "huge redeployment plans."

Efficiency promises and big technology budgets aside, the head count cuts haven't yet materialized at most banks. Around 60% of 240 financial services CEOs surveyed by EY said they expect AI investments to maintain or boost their head count this year.

• Demarre Johnson, 23, appeared in a viral photo shoot published by Interview magazine last week.
• PwC on Friday confirmed Johnson had left the company, saying he departed in mid-February.
• A person familiar with the matter told Business Insider his exit wasn't related to the magazine pictorial.

One of the "finest boys in finance" — whose splashy magazine spread last week was the talk of Wall Street — is no longer with his firm.

In a statement to Business Insider, PwC confirmed that former associate Demarre Johnson is "no longer an employee and left the firm in mid-February."

Johnson went viral last week after he and three junior bankers were featured in designer clothing in an Interview magazine photo shoot published March 4. A person familiar with the matter said his departure was not related to his magazine appearance.

The 23-year-old, who spoke with Business Insider twice after the magazine story, didn't comment when a reporter reached him on Friday.

The Babson College graduate talked to Business Insider last week about being chosen for the spread, saying he knew it would make headlines because "controversy sells."

"My initial reaction was, 'Oh, they're going to clown us because we think we're pretty,'" Johnson said. "That's exactly what happened."

The photo shoot generated instant discourse among Wall Street insiders who took to social media to vent about the stereotypes they said it portrayed and the unofficial rules it broke — including not outshining your bosses.

Bankers buzzed about whether the participants — who also worked at Goldman Sachs and Barclays — got approval from their employers before going in front of the cameras. Goldman said that "media relations did not approve these interviews." The other firms didn't comment at the time.

Johnson, who has a vibrant social media presence, said on Monday that he's been careful about social media posts he's made about his job. "If I built the multibillion-dollar bank business, I would hate if one of my associates formed my company's image with one video," he told Business Insider.

Other participants in the shoot have avoided the spotlight since its release, but Johnson reposted feedback about the story on his social channels.

"I'm viral on twitter," he said in one post, with four crying emojis.