Boutique investment bank Moelis & Co has been on a roll. It is advising Saudi Aramco on its plans for a huge flotation; it helped Broadcom on its blocked bid for Qualcomm; and ranked fourth among boutique banks in the first quarter with $85m in fees, according to Thomson Reuters.

But now it is in the news for all of the wrong reasons. Last week a mid-level banker sent a 12:30am email to the boutique’s junior professionals, known as analysts, complaining he had just walked around the New York office and found only 11 of them at their desks.

“I know that you are ALL working very hard and are stretched thin across multiple projects,” he wrote. “Given that new [projects needing] staffings continue to flow in and you are all very near capacity, the only way I can think of to differentiate among you is to see who is in the office in the wee hours of the morning.”