Investment bank Moelis has placed one of its managing directors, Jonathan Kaye, on administrative leave after social media users identified the banker as the man caught on video punching a woman to the ground, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
The roughly 10-second video does not show what happened before the punch that was allegedly delivered during Pride celebrations in Brooklyn on Saturday.
The video shows a man, identified by X as Kay – an M&A banker who heads Moelis’ business services franchise – leaving the scene of the incident while bystanders call him an “idiot” and a “horrible person” and tell him to “fuck off.” [him]self. “
“She threw shit all over me,” the man tells bystanders, then turns to the camera and walks away with a plastic bag in his hand. A wet substance can be seen on the back of his blazer. The video begins with the two men helping a second person lying in the street.
““We have been made aware of a serious incident involving one of our employees in Brooklyn on June 8,” Morris told Bloomberg on Sunday. “We are taking this matter very seriously and are investigating.”
A spokesman for Mr Morris confirmed to the Daily Mail that the man in the video was Mr Kay.
Kaye declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg and the New York Post.
Kaye is not the first director at the Wall Street bank to be implicated in highly publicized conduct issues this year.
Citi Managing Director Edward Ruff said: Take leave in January He reportedly left the bank while it was investigating allegations that he had threatened a colleague and yelled abuse at a member of his team who was late to a call. This spring.
Kaye joined Moelis in 2013 from Citi, where he worked in the bank’s global mergers and acquisitions group. A link to his LinkedIn profile shows the page is private.
But Mr Kaye said on a podcast last year that he provides “a great deal of mentoring” to junior staff.
He told his mentors, telling the host: “Pay attention and focus on the people you admire. There’s probably a reason why they’re successful.”
“Hard skills should be acquired as quickly as possible, but at the end of the day, what really matters is grit, resilience, learning how to listen, understanding other people’s motivations, and empathy. These are the essential skills that separate you from someone who’s just a calculator,” he told the LSE Focal Points Podcast in May 2023.
He also detailed his struggles in breaking into the banking industry with no financial background.
“I learned that I’m not as special as my mother said I was,” he said on the podcast. “I learned that Wall Street is an unforgiving place, and that rewards — and I don’t mean compensation, but opportunities, mentoring considerations, the chance to work in the best situations — are only given to those who do good work and do good work consistently.”
“I learned some of the basic concepts that we probably take for granted, but when you’re in your 20s, you have to learn everything from scratch,” Kaye said.
“It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, being consistent, managing your reputation carefully, managing difficult people carefully, staying away from toxic people,” he said. “Also, in finance, it was a time when there weren’t as many rules and people were a little bit rougher than they are in today’s environment.”
An NYPD spokesperson told Bloomberg they are investigating the incident, adding that they would answer further questions via email. An email seeking more details was not immediately returned.
