Canary Wharf bar said to eject badly behaving interns as offers thin on the ground

Boutique firms excepted, summer internships in the City of London are now over. Some interns got offers; some didn't. Some interns have already gone on holiday to erase the stain of 80 hour weeks; others are hanging around trying to secure full time offers if they haven't got one already, or to upgrade the ones they've got.

Now that the official intern experience is done, the need to rein-in alcohol consumption and demonstrate good behaviour at all times has lessened. Accordingly, rumour has it that interns from one major bank at Canary Wharf got carried away and were ejected from All Bar One for poor behaviour, something the bar itself declined to confirm or deny.

Either way, some banking interns complain that offers were hard to come by in front office divisions this year. While 70% to 75% of interns in hot business areas like leveraged finance and technology appear to have received offers to return full time in 2018, interns in areas like sales and trading seem to have been less successful.

One J.P. Morgan intern claims the bank extended offers to fewer than 50% of the people on her sales team. "Maybe it was Brexit," she said, " - Although I heard the same thing happened last year."  Another J.P. Morgan intern claims that although 75% of people on the tech team received full time offers, this was down from 100% last year and that only 60% accepted: "Some people decided this wasn't what they wanted to do after all."

As usual, the most desirable interns are now being feted by banks who want to poach them from rivals. One J.P. Morgan tech intern says he's already received a message from a recruiter representing Goldman Sachs inviting him to a "networking breakfast." A leveraged finance intern at another bank says he's already been invited to a similar breakfast hosted by private equity firms. Another intern claims to have been contacted by Morgan Stanley.

Even the interns who ended the summer without much to show for it (except possibly being barred from hostelries in Canary Wharf) say the experience was worthwhile. "I used to be sh*t at Excel" says one."I didn't even know how to multiply two numbers in it when it started."

Have a story or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: Champagne by acearchie is licensed under CC BY 2.0.