• Last year, Goldman named Kunal Shah co-CEO of its international business and global co-head of FICC.
• Shah made partner at just 31, having climbed to the top after about a decade with the bank.
• He spoke with Business Insider about the EMEA tech scene, global volatility, and the bank's future.

Not many people can say they've made partner at Goldman Sachs. Even fewer can say they did it at the age of 31.

Kunal Shah can say both.

Shah joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the firm's trading business in 2004 and rose to partner in about a decade. Last January, he was promoted to two new roles: co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International and global co-head of fixed income, currencies, and commodities. Based in London, he also holds a seat on the bank's overarching management committee.

As part of a new series of Q&As we're kicking off with some of Goldman Sachs' top executives, Business Insider had the chance to sit down with Shah to discuss Europe's tech sector, Goldman's presence in the Middle East, and what the financial industry's embrace of AI means for newcomers' careers.

Here's our conversation with Shah, edited for length and clarity.

What do you recall from those early years, and how did senior bankers mentor you during your ascent?

After graduation, what struck me when I hit the trading floor as a full-time analyst was that I had access to the then-partners, even when I was just a new kid on the trading desk. When I became a partner, I found the interconnectedness — your ability to make a call to any partner anywhere in the world, offering a clear baseline of trust — amazing.

I would call out Ashok Varadhan, who I have worked with since day one, and who is now the firm's co-head of global banking and markets. I first met him when he agreed to meet for a coffee when I was a fresh analyst and visited New York for my training in 2004. He was already a partner, but he took the time to connect, and we stayed in touch when I hit the trading floor in London. He would listen to my views and he welcomed debates around risks or initiatives.

From him, I learned to have a laser focus on risk management, but also a willingness to take and scale risk where there is opportunity in the business.

As new analysts hit the desk this summer, how do you see AI affecting the long-term outlook for bankers and traders?

Junior talent are inherently tech-savvy, and they don't have the legacy of why we do things in a certain way. They can see how to disrupt us.

Even when I was an intern, people were telling me, "Don't rotate into fixed income trading desks — it's all going to get automated." A lot of the administrative tasks that junior people used to do were no longer needed because we were able to leverage technology and tools to achieve scale.

For me, AI is just another natural extension of that. More of the mundane work — whether that's making presentations, building Excel models, or booking trades — doesn't need to be done in the same way.

The bottom-up experimentation I see across the whole organization is powered by the tools we've released. Once you equip your people with these tools, they can experiment and find things that could be game-changing.

If young people come in with the mindset of actually helping us to disrupt things, and to embrace the change, I think the experience they can have in this industry can be phenomenal.

You're at the helm of Goldman Sachs International as co-CEO of GSI and global co-head of FICC. What's the most interesting facet of being in those seats right now?

The common thread across both roles — and the thing I love most about them — is that no day is the same.

Working in FICC means you're right at the intersection of politics, macroeconomics, geopolitics, and how each of these interact at the micro level with different sectors and markets. Part of the job is balancing long-term strategic views with the constant flow of markets. Even now, if you look at this moment in time, there is uncertainty around commodity markets and you need to watch how that feeds into the monetary policy decisions of central banks, asset allocation shifts and more. There is almost consistency in the uncertainty, and that is inherently exciting to work amidst.

As co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International, I have been exposed to a much broader range of clients across the firm. Across the region, we've got around 29 offices — which means we have people, we have clients, and we have interactions with key policymakers, regulators, finance officials, and central bankers.

The US appears to be leading in AI investment and infrastructure. What's your outlook for the EMEA tech landscape, and how is that changing?

Over the last decade, the number of unicorns in the broader European context has tripled. The tech space in EMEA is much broader than people realize.

In terms of capital markets being US-centric — there is definitely an element there when you're talking about the hyperscalers, and this huge amount of AI-related debt issuance we're seeing. Many of those large tech platforms are quite US-centric. But I wouldn't say exclusively.

You can remember companies like DeepMind and others very much coming out of the tech ecosystem in Europe.

We are witnessing what is arguably the largest investment cycle in history, with our research teams estimating that hyperscaler capex could reach between $700 billion and $725 billion in 2026 alone.

While the US and China lead the LLM race, we also see a distinct competitive edge for the EMEA region at the AI application layer. European entrepreneurs are taking core models and building specialized, high-value software to solve industry-specific problems in robotics, autonomous drones, and smart factories.

As the conflict in Iran continues, how do you view the potential impacts of the Middle East conflict for Goldman's international businesses?

We have five offices in the region — in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Riyadh, and Kuwait — and over 100 people. In the past 12 months alone, we announced our office opening in Kuwait, a new office in Riyadh, and the onshoring of our private wealth business there. We are active across advisory, financing, markets and as an asset manager and investor.

The countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council have managed the situation very well so far, both from maintaining a safe environment but also ensuring that the countries continue to operate with a good sense of as much normality as possible given the situation.

Once we move beyond the current conflict, the renewed focus on infrastructure and resilience will bring other opportunities for us to help our clients, and our presence there enables our ability to do so.

• 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.

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• BNY's CEO, Robin Vince, is all in on AI's role in steering the bank's future.
• Now, some managers oversee the bank's 140 digital employees, a form of agentic AI.
• We spoke to Vince and a BNY managing director about the program.

Despite its 240-year pedigree, BNY isn't showing its age.

Under CEO Robin Vince, who took the reins in 2022, the firm — founded by Alexander Hamilton — is aggressively embracing AI. Recently, it has begun entrusting some managers with oversight of a contingent of new workers who don't even require a chair: the digital employee.

"All digital employees report to a human manager," Vince said in an interview with Business Insider this month in Palm Beach.

These digital employees create a layered effect with the company's agentic products, in which a single entity coordinates the activities of multiple individual agents. The digital workforce is more than 140 agents strong, each one with roughly two dozen skills, give or take, comprising their suite of abilities.

And, just like humans, they're held accountable for their work — with performance reviews.

After executing a variety of tasks humans might find tedious, the digital employee presents it to "the human who's responsible for the process — 'I've just done three quarters of the work for you. And by the way, I did it in 10 minutes instead of what would have otherwise been two weeks," the CEO explained.

About 100 managers across the firm oversee digital employees, including Rachel Lewis, a managing director and a two-decade BNY veteran who now serves as head of AI enablement for operations. Appointed to the role this year, Lewis is now helping teams across the bank build and deploy digital employees within their day-to-day workflows.

"We're kind of transferring the mundane to the machines," she said, describing how the tools are taking over routine processes and shifting how work gets done.

Lewis told Business Insider she works closely with teams across BNY to help them develop their own digital employees — often starting with ideas that come directly from the people doing the work and turning them into tools over time.

"The person that came up with that idea actually gets the opportunity to build that digital employee," she said. As teams begin to incorporate them into their workflows, she added, the technology starts to feel less like software and more like part of the team. "It's just almost having a virtual teammate as part of your group."

170,000 hours of training

To prepare for the AI age, BNY implemented a massive 170,000-hour AI training program for its 48,000 staffers. "Everyone in the company has done two to three hours," he said. The goal was to turn employees into a new class of supervisors who managed, rather than competed with, the machine. "We're investing in our people, because I want them to be the unlockers and users of AI," Vince added.

Last week, he sent a memo to several thousand of the firm's senior leaders pointing to some of the firm's past efforts in AI and encouraging them to be proactive in continuing to incorporate it. "We have an obligation to our company to capture this opportunity," Vince wrote in the email, whose subject line was "Reimagining BNY."

"This is a fundamental leadership shift, not simply a capability shift," he added. "It will require each of us to lean in and role-model how to engage with AI and how to harness it to solve problems."

Speaking to Business Insider, Vince described his first personal deep dive into AI as a "summer project" that kicked off in 2023 and never ended.

It was sparked by a YouTube video he saw that broke down the functionality of Tesla's Autopilot 12. He watched as the car observed human behavior and applied what it saw to navigating a stop sign, rather than adhering to a few rigid lines of code. "It was very clear to me that the future of AI was going to be learning to make decisions," Vince said. He wanted to bring that same adaptive intelligence to the bank. "It was highly applicable to our businesses," he added, "and it would be able to be a very fundamental input to how we actually ran the company."

Expanding the digital workforce

While some of the earliest digital employees have applications focused on straightforward fixes like data repair and data capture, Lewis said the tools that have stood out most are those that make it easier for employees to build and refine their own digital employees.

Building a digital employee starts with observing how work is actually done. Teams record themselves completing tasks step by step, allowing the system to analyze different approaches and identify the most efficient way to perform the work. That output is then used to generate the instructions that guide a digital employee, which are refined over time as teams train the system on new variations of the task.

Lewis said that as digital employees become embedded in workflows, teams are also treating them more like members of the workforce. "There is a performance review," she said.

Managers evaluate how the systems perform by reviewing outputs, identifying where they skip tasks or "didn't perform as expected," and feeding that work back into the system to be retrained on new variations and edge cases.

"We're continuously monitoring them," she added. "Every week it gets a little bit better."

Even as it expands its digital workforce, Vince said there are no plans to cut back on human capital; these tools, he said, are meant to supercharge their workflow, but not take responsibilities out of their hands. "I speak to CEOs who say, 'We're going to downsize, massively, our campus program.'" Vince's reply? "Why would you do that?"

"We've got the opportunity to have young people who are pre-trained in AI, enthusiastic, and be able to add to our business in different ways," he said.

• 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.

• 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.