Graduate hiring set to rise at investment banks

We asked the heads of graduate recruitment at eight banks in London whether they expected next year's graduate intake to rise or fall. Their answers make promising reading for anyone with an application in the pipeline: 63% said graduate numbers were going up; the remainder said they would stay the same.

The forecast increase comes on the back of a strong year for investment banking graduate recruitment in 2005, following poor years previously. "At this stage, we expect numbers to be up 20% in 2006," said the head of graduate recruitment at one US bank in London, "We expect to hire around 140 analysts."

Banks forecasting a rise in graduate hiring include JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley said they expected hiring numbers to remain steady. One graduate recruiter who forecast a rise requested the bank remain anonymous.

Recruiters offered different reasons for their optimism. Clare Witton, head of graduate marketing in Europe for JP Morgan, said the rise in graduate hires was a long term strategic move: "Our talent is a key part of our competitive advantage and growing our own analyst and associate pool is a key part of our strategy."

Danielle Wrobleski, head of graduate recruitment at Bank of America, said hiring was up because the bank was growing in Europe.

Calum Forrest, head of European recruitment at Goldman Sachs, said hiring was likely to be steady because of buoyant market conditions. He said: "Last year was a good year for analyst hiring and this year will be too. Business feels good, and that translates to a strong graduate intake." Goldman recently reported a 84% increase in net income during the third quarter of this year, compared to the third quarter of 2004.

Recruiters said MBA hiring is also likely to be strong. "There's optimism about investment banking, which is a big recruiter of MBAs", said Forrest, "And we have more MBA opportunities in private wealth management."

Sallyann Birchall, head of graduate recruitment at Deutsche Bank, said the bank has built a strong MBA hiring programme in recent years and made offers to 80% of its recent summer interns. While most banks focus MBAs hiring on investment banking divisions, Birchall said an increasing number of MBAs are going into diverse roles in sales and trading.

Goldman Sachs is top graduates' favourite bank

Separately, a recent survey of 16,000 graduates at top universities across the UK, found Goldman Sachs their favourite investment banking employer.

Goldman ranked ninth out of 100 different major graduate recruiters, up two places on last year. Rival US investment banks Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch ranked 42nd and 50th respectively. Other banks in the ranking included: HSBC (9th, but included retail banking), Royal Bank of Scotland (15th), and JP Morgan (16th).

Graduates' top destination was PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm.