Goldman Sachs: London

good, nice people, pretty down to earth and happy. It's competitive though, really really competitive. I think you'll like it.

Are there a significant number of Americans (including sr. bankers)?

How good is GS's Real Estate & energy and utilities teams? Thanks!

Yup, especially the senior bankers. Didn't find too many Americans in the junior levels though.

@Sleepy Not sure which team u r referring to. There is an Industrials & Natural Resources team and in Real Estate there is a Private equity group (PIA) and a separate financing group. I had friends who interned in both the groups.

Randomguy- Is see you've answered my question about INR in the earlier post. I was thinking of Real Estate - M&A (or does the team sit within Financing group)?

Have you heard of anyone in PIA for summer? I heard they hired some undergrads into ESSG this summer...

I don't know of a Real Estate M&A group (Does such a group exist anywhere?? havent heard of any real estate M&A deals) . The Real estate financing groups is a small 20-30 member group that sits with the M&A team. Nice group, hardly any weekends and no one sits there beyond 11 pm.

Yeah they had interns in PIA and REPIA. I know of a friend who was in ESSG last year. Its a very tough group to crack into even for GS IBD analysts (after 2 years). They made him give out some sort of a 2 hour presentation in the end and weren't too satisfied with that and so no offer! Amazing bonuses though

Thanks for the info. How did he get hired for ESSG given that its obviously not advertised on the online form? Also was it easy for him to get hired with an internship there on his CV?

He got lucky actually. He was originally supposed to have been taken as an IBD SA, but ended up in ESSG due to some HR process (maybe someone there liked his profile, he was a CS major and had worked with NASA through his undergrad) which is unclear even to him. He did have an extra telephone interview later.

Wow... How abut PIA? Do you know anyone who got in there?

There doesnt seem to be a way to network your way into these groups...:(

Pretty similar. I don't think they take in regular interns as well. My best bet would be to get an IBD SA offer and then try and network and grab that slot. PIA is kind of a dream job actually. Incredible hours (something like 8-6, no weekends) and great bonuses. I daresay you will be fighting it out with 2nd year GS analysts looking for a move. ESSG, PIA and a few prop trading desks are typically where GS 2nd year analysts end up. This is unlike the 2 years analyst-->PE/MBA path in NYC. Almost everyone in London moves within GS after 2 years and relatively fewer numbers leave outside for MBA or PE.

For students in the US applying for SA positions in Europe, does the application start with on campus recruiting, or is it completely separate (ie people in Europe review the online submission)?