The MDs in the City of London are posher than analysts

Next time you get the impression that the City of London is filled with Oxbridge educated Harrovians with family estates in the shires, stop. Think again. That's just the managing directors.

Today's much publicized report from the UK government on social mobility suggests financial services firms are becoming more socially accessible rather than less.

As the graphs below show, the proportion of bankers who attended independent schools and Oxbridge is far higher for banking 'leaders' (managing directors/MDs) than for banking 'new hires' (analysts).

Most notably, 60% of MDs went to public schools, compared to 'only' 37% of analysts. And 39% of MDs went to Oxbridge, compared to just 9% of analysts.

In place of public schools and Oxbridge, today's young bankers are increasingly likely to come from comprehensive schools and top 13 and 30 universities. Our own research consistently shows that analysts are more likely to come from universities like Imperial, the London School of Economics and UCL than from Oxford and Cambridge.