Will banks renege on graduate offers?
Ernst & Young has done it. So has Bank of Ireland. Will investment banks follow suit?
Hopefully not. It's a bit too late in the day for banks to tell students who are meant to be turning up in a month or so's time that their services won't be required after all.
"It's awfully close to the line now," says Fiona Sandford, head of the careers service at the London School of Economics. "I'd be very surprised if any banks cancelled at this stage - what's a lot more likely is that there will be a lot less hiring next year."
The imminent appearance of this year's student intake didn't dissuade Bank of Ireland or Ernst & Young from getting cold feet. Bank of Ireland was supposed to be taking on 116 graduate trainees in the coming October, but a spokeswoman says half of them are being encouraged to postpone their arrival until October 2009.
Separately, the Telegraph reported recently that Ernst & Young asked 30 of its 500 graduate recruits for this autumn to defer their entry or move into other areas.
The paper said the students asked to defer were due to enter the firm's corporate finance division.
Although Credit Suisse was rumoured to have deferred some graduate entrants in 2002, banks' recruiters say there's no sign of this happening again now.
Susan Couper, head of graduate recruitment at Dresdner Kleinwort, says it doesn't make sense for banks to pull back on graduate offers: "Graduates are the future, and they're relatively low cost."
