Jean-Francois Coste investment banker at NYC’s Tocqueville Asset Management suspended after punching Tanya McCray MTA worker during drunken session.
One more for the road? A Manhattan investment banker has been put on indefinite leave following his arrest for allegedly attacking a female New York City subway operator while intoxicated in Brooklyn, on Friday.
Officials at Tocqueville Asset Management made the revelation in a statement Sunday, while declining to say whether 53-year-old finance worker Jean-Francois Coste‘s suspension would be with or without pay.
Coste, who had worked at the Midtown firm for nearly 15 years before Friday’s early-morning assault on MTA worker Tanya McCray at a Coney Island subway station, faces up to seven years in prison for the attack if convicted.
According to McCray, 56, the altercation occurred after she denied a ‘visibly intoxicated’ Coste access to an employees-only area of the station. When the MTA vet told the financier he couldn’t gain access, he allegedly responded by punching her twice in the face. He was arrested but has since been freed without bail.
Tocqueville, a boutique Midtown investment firm where average analysts’ salaries make circa six figures, wrote in their statement Sunday that the suspension was effective immediately, and would persist as police continue to probe the assault.
‘I didn’t see the punch, it happened so fast.’
‘Tocqueville Asset Management is completely intolerant of violent behavior and, pending further investigation, will take whatever action is necessary,’ the company said of allegations currently leveled against the senior equity analyst.
Cops said that Coste took off after the assault, at the Stillwell Avenue station around 12:15 a.m, but was cornered by transit workers and eventually arrested by police. A report via the nydailynews told of the investment banker facing his first criminal arrest.
Coste upon his arrest was charged with assault on a transit employee, harassment, and menacing – offenses that could seem him put behind bars for a maximum of seven years. Following a brief arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Friday, Costes was ordered released without bail.
Police are still investigating the incident, which left train worker McCray hospitalized with several bruises.
The MTA veteran was able to fight off Coste by hitting him in the face with her thermos and lunch bag before being assisted by a co-worker.
‘I didn’t see him punch me,’ McCray told via the union according to the nypost as how she was suddenly struck after refusing to let the suspect into the employee section of the station. ‘I didn’t see the punch, it happened so fast.’
According to his LinkedIn profile, Coste has been with Tocqueville since February 2008, and was currently working at the firm as a senior equity analyst.
Gilded lifestyle
He graduated from Northeastern University in Boston in 1993 and previously earned an MBA in finance at the NEOMA Business School in France.
Coste’s profile has been purged from the Tocqueville company website since the attack, and he has made his Instagram and Facebook accounts private.
Images on Instagram prior to being set on private showed Costes promoting trips to the Guggenheim, Broadway shows, music festivals at the Jersey Shore.
Coste and his partner have also been photographed running marathons, with a September snap showing them running one in Neptune, New Jersey.
Previous social media posts cited by the dailymail included the investment banker’s love of beer and wine, with one post a Heineken ad that he described as ‘advertising at its best,’ along with multiple shots of Coste enjoying a beverage with his friends and family.
Coste lives in a brownstone in the Boreum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn that rents for about $9,200 a month, according to Zillow.
Jail time?
McCray, who has since been released from the hospital, said of her attacker Saturday: ‘I hope justice is done. I hope he gets jail time.’
Police sources told the nydailynews they suspected Coste – who they saw as clearly drunk – was trying to use the bathroom.
Transport Workers Union President Richard Davis added: ‘We will see this guy in court …. No more slaps on the wrist.’
NYC Transit Chief Operating Officer Craig Cipriano added that his agency has ‘zero tolerance’ for attacks against transit workers.
While overall crime in the city is up nearly 25 percent in 2022, transit crime had gone down in November, with the city crediting a surge in police on the subway system.
Felony assaults are up 12.8 percent across the five boroughs through December 11.
