Post MBA IBD Recruitment from LBS

I was wondering if anybody could shed some light on IBD (associate) recruiting at London Business School. An MBA is a typical US degree and most BB associates in New York come from top b-schools.

London has more of a A2A culture, and as such, I believe there are not too many associate positions open at MBAs. I talked with a few friends of mine on this, and most of them mentioned there are not that many MBA Associates at their investment bank.

Could anybody elaborate? More importantly, it seems to be the conventional wisdom across the board that if you go to an M7 school and are serious about IB, you'll get it. Does the same hold true for LBS?

22 Comments
 

+10% of the grads go to IB post-MBA, which is something like 40-50 grads. I'd assume those are mostly associate level recruits.

 

If you want IB, you'll get it. It's true that banks in London have more of an A2A culture, but most analysts still end up leaving so banks still need to hire a significant number of associate so there's a ton of recruiting activity from all banks. plus the number of students interested in IB is at record low so competition is weak and many banks aren't able to fill in all their open position (ie. recent SA recruiting, DB gave 7-8 offers and all were turned down, MS took 5 SA all were given offers, but one 2 took them, etc). The only bank I am aware that hasn't given offers because of significant A2A activity is JPM. Anyway, all that to say that if you are serious about IB, do the interview prep and, coffee chat, etc, you'll get a BB or top EB position

 

Thanks a lot. Having all SA turn down a full-time offer is quite alarming. Most of the DB lay-offs were not in IBD if I am informed correctly. Any idea why no-one accepted?

 

You won't have issues getting interviews and internships for IBD assoc programs from LBS. only thing to keep in mind is that banks are starting to shy away more and more from assoc Mba hires. JPM killed the program entirely.

I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. See my Blog & AMA
 

I guess there wasn't much need for them because JPM has high retention rates for A to A's in London and from my understanding past experience with MBA Associates wasn't the best.

I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. See my Blog & AMA
 

Overall placement is very good, but it depends on what you want to do. Consulting, banking or tech are very well covered through campus recruiting so for those, I'd say placement is more of less the same as m7 (excl. HS). For everything else that involves networking, being in London, you are at a disadvantage so while I have seen classmates get very good jobs (AM, PE, HF, startup, etc), it's a bit more of a challenge. It is obviously much easier for American citizens since non-american face quite a challenge in getting a Visa (unless Canadian, Aussie, Singaporean or Mexican for which it is easier). That being said, I have quite a few non-American classmate who ended up in the US

 
Best Response

pretty easy to get a Visa in the UK. they got rid of post-graduate Visa in 2011 (the equivalent of OPT in the States), but the process is very straightforward to sponsor a student so it is not an issue for 98% of employers (employers need to be registered with the government in order to sponsor and sometimes, small firms aren't). there's no quota and the tier 2 are given for long term (forget if it's 3 or 5 years) and easy to renew. the big difference vs the US is that you are 100% sure of getting a Visa while in the US last year, only ~1/3 of H1B applicant were selected. For this reason, US employers have been getting more and more reluctant to hire non-US citizens (I know of at least 3 peoples who couldn't get an H1B and had to be transfered once OPT ran out).

regarding placement for Asians specifically, I don't think there's any real difference vs. the broader LBS community in terms of Industry (although it seemed the proportion of East Asians that were sponsored was higher than the average). I don't have stats, but judging from people in my year, whether they stayed or went back to Asia seemed to be more down to preferences (and to be fair English speaking ability as well) than anything else (ie. almost all the Indians stayed in London, while 100% of the Japanese and most of the Chinese went back home).

 

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