2020 Intern Offer Rates

Still relatively early enough in the pandemic that I don’t think many are downsizing.

Like the market, banks in general seem to be looking past the current environment in hopes of greener pastures ahead.

Like you mentioned, it’s hard to judge performance right now so the fact you still have an internship should be comforting. Banks should still be giving offers roughly inline with their historical rates because no one really knows what demand will be like.

Between the sheer amount of SPACs being raised to PE firms not only sitting on record amounts of Dry Powder / raising even more who’s to say deal activity won’t pick up?

Edit: was wrong. High return rates

I think that return offers will be lower than historical trends at least for Europe (M&A), churn rate has been reduced and that may have to also be taken into account.

Cant truly back it up, HR will decide who gets the offers based on feedback (we have pushed hard for some kids but couldnt get any confirmation about offers) so its just a personal view

we are zeroing out the class this year

I mean have y’all seen annualized m&a volumes ? Probably down more than 50% vs 18/19. Going to be bad

I'm pretty worried. My honest opinion is that banks are going to split one of two ways- either nearly all offers or very low offer rates.

We've already seen places like Citi/Moelis/Blair go 100% offers, which is honestly just a nice thing to do given that it's a pandemic, it's hard to fairly evaluate people at home due to differences in things like wifi and qualify of work space, and a 5 week (or whatever shorter length) internship just makes it hard to adequately judge. I'd expect places that are known for good culture and taking care of their employees (think more EBs are likely to fall here than BBs, but who knows) make the nice gesture of extending more offers just to earn some good will with the incoming hires. If historic offer rates are around 90% (which is true at lots of EBs and MMs), giving 100% offer rates only means a few more offers at the end of the day, and then they can probably count on a few people turning down their offers so I think it won't end up changing much.

The other side of the table is that this is a pandemic, and, while many banks have avoided doing layoffs until after the pandemic is over, all it takes is one look at the league tables to get scared. M&A is getting absolutely smoked. RX and S&T might be floating the ship at some places, but lots of EBs and MMs are way overexposed in M&A. Especially if banks are trying to avoid layoffs, lowering the FT offer rate is a good way to keep head count lower in the long run without hurting morale as much. Especially at a public shop that is primarily driven by M&A (ie somewhere like Evercore or even a MM like Piper Sandler), they could publicly announce they're cutting headcount by 10% by 2021 or some bogus like that to show they are doing something, but in reality that could just mean they are giving less FT offers and thus reducing the headcount a year from now. This is pretty stupid because hopefully things will be good again by next summer when ETs would start, but unfortunately banks (especially public ones with pesky shareholders breathing down their neck) may be under some pressure to cut costs and not giving offers is likely the path of least resistance to trimming headcount.

The other interesting thing is the spread in which banks are performing. GS and MS put up some of their best quarterly earnings ever, so one would think that maybe there is actually more money in the pot to go around. Unfortunately for us IB folks, most of that money was from S&T and capital raises, but who knows whether that will be reflected by just those fields getting sick return offer rates or some of that wealth might spread to IB. On the other hand, places with big lending businesses like BAML (whose earnings were down 70%) might be under big time pressure to reduce offer rates.

The morale of the story is none of us have any clue, so let's hope for the first case where everyone is nice and gives us all offers but prepare for the worst case where we all get fucked. Let's all just crush the last couple weeks of our internships and hope for the best. We'll find out soon enough regardless.

MM here. We decided offers in our group, i'd say probably about 50 percent return rate. The bank simply does not want a lot of offers going out.

Judged based off the limited work produced and overall attitude. Sad situation as a lot of kids didn't do a bad job just maybe needed a few weeks to ramp up but unfortunately did not have time.

The bright side is for the people who didn't get offers you won't be looked down upon compared to other years but other firms you apply for.

it’s going to be a total bloodbath. i don’t even know how they are gonna make selections. expecting around 50%, top MM.

Bump

Just an intern.. but my best guess is it will be the same as previous years cause M&A is a cyclical business and banks know that. Besides this summer class will only join next summer and it is likely the economy will pick up pace again.

At the larger banks I don't see the offer rate being impacted too much. They are doing a lot of financings which will offset a big dip in M&A, if not fully then at least by a fair amount. Obviously if this situation persists much longer then things could change, but in 2020 / 1H2021 I doubt there will be a huge impact at the analyst/associate level at least.

The top boutiques all have good restructuring arms, which will expect to see large amounts of activity later in the year. And on the M&A side, these firms tend to advise the largest players in their respective sectors, who are more likely to be active in M&A even during these times, acquiring smaller and more struggling players.

The lower tier boutiques / MM shops without any capital markets activity is where I could see a significant impact in terms of offer rates.

My former group at a BB is not planning to change its offer policy, will still be around 75-80% (which it has been historically).

A friend of mine at an MM told me one of their full-time folks made a mistake of accidentally cc'ing interns on correspondence with a slide that showed their office class size and the expected conversion rate across analysts and associates. The range was 50%-75% full-time offers.

BofA just gave out offers. Close to 100% for all groups.

Okay so BofA’s seems to be about 100%. I personally don’t know anyone who didn’t convert (London).

Too early to tell at most banks. Lots of uncertainty still. Will say if you're at a bank that plays in capital markets that activity should help and would expect a pretty good offer rate. Would be more worried if at a pure sell-side M&A place that don't have balance sheets and don't do capital markets (or no RX). Just my feeling from talking to people

By when in the summer do the groups determine who gets offers?

Anyone have thoughts on returns for EB shops with less of a focus on RX (EVR, PWP, LAZ, Greenhill) and those with a RX focus (PJT, HL)?

EVR not doing lateral recruiting - likely to be almost 100% FT convert rate

Bump - any insights this is the last week of most internships

bump

Jefferies just slashed intern offer rates. Less than 50%

Top MM. 50% confirmed. Typical year was 95%+.

Everyone is pissed off. Was an awful experience stack ranking interns given the limited workflow.

confirmed top MM with LESS than 50%. it was by group ranking and some groups had literally 25-30% return rates.

Canadian bank I work at in Toronto will be cutting headcount of internship program so offers will be reduced. Not sure by how much though, but it certainly won't be like previous years

So did the interns this summer just get totally screwed with things getting probably back to normal by next summer with normal return rates

Interesting that Jefferies had low rates cause fee wise they're doing great this year

Wow sucks to hear that about jefferies. Know some kids were summering there before I left school... makes me feel even worse for non target kids cause I know JEF takes a decent amount. The targets have a better shot of having ppl they know pull for them (from my POV) hope someone sticks up for the non targets.

Oh well tho. Gotta agree it’s shitty how that dude preaches on his IG. I swear to god everyone’s a closet Ellen (see what I did there hehe)

Rich handler cares more about his Instagram sponsorship money on the side than his interns

Jefferies offer rate was likely down this year because they changed the returns to be direct group placements instead of generalist offers. Interns that ranked certain groups high in their preferences would be SOL if those groups didn’t reciprocate and vice versa.

Pretty brutal at DB

How about CS? 

EBs were high. Like straight up 100% at CVP.

Barclays was basically 100%, maybe an intern here and there got cut.