I wanted to start a central thread where all Canadian undergrad students could comment and share inquiries, information, and concerns regarding investment banking summer analyst recruiting/timeline for summer 2018 in CANADA (Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, etc)
Canadian banks: RBC CIBC TD BMO SCOTIA NBC
MM/Boutique: Canaccord Genuity GMP Securities Blair Franklin Origin Merchant Evans & Evans
Globals: BAML CS JPM GS Barclays Evercore HSBC Wells Fargo
Best of luck to everyone grinding right now!
I am Canadian and just want to hedge my bets in case overseas recruitment does not pan out well.
That's exactly why CDN banks tend not to give much attention to Canadians studying abroad. If Canada isn't your first choice, it will show (it always does) and it will be very hard for people to take you seriously. 99 times out of 100, people will choose a NYC / London offer ahead of a Canadian one.
Tip for those who attend a target: Try to leverage your network to figure out who the recruiting captain is for your school. In terms of networking, I'd say associates and VPs should be your focus. Anybody higher probably won't give you the time of day, whereas analysts are open to chatting but have less pull. From what I've seen most recruiting captains are associates as well.
It's kind of late now, but high GPAs these days go a long way. Lots of kids with traditional "finance" backgrounds are getting passed up for kids who have a 3.8+ and demonstrated a bit of interest in finance(even if it started a month before recruiting season). Another piece of feedback my friends and I got as well especially with the Canadian banks is not to seem too rehearsed. If you attend a school with a lot of resources(alumni, mock interviews, prep guides.. READ: Ivey/Queens), its actually possible to over-prepare. Canadian banks care much more about fit as opposed to being able to memorize every question in a guide. In fact, interviews at Canadian banks are more like 70% fit/30% technical.
Done school however I wanted to chime in with my thoughts on IB in Canada. Ivey/Queens/Waterloo will be the best in terms of feeding you into IB/S&T IMO. Regional IB/certain programs like UBC PMF, University of Calgary and HEC Montreal will place you as well. I'd like to say UofT, McGill, and York Schulich will be runner up after the top 3 and everything else is pretty much a non target.
Side note: I forgot which student groups at Ivey/Queens have guides floating around the internet/their website but I believe the QUIC guide/the Ivey Capital Markets club may be the ones that appeared top notch.
As someone attending a "Canadian target", I'm actually quite surprised at how much the forum undermines names such as Rotman/Schulich/Laurier/UW. Sure if you're speaking BB/EB or IB in the US its really Ivey/Queens/McGill lights out, but if your goal is Big 5 or one of the independents in Canada, the schools above place just fine.
Of course they put in effort, what do you expect? Do you think Lloyd Blankfein is strolling down to London, Ontario with a huge boner looking for the next stud from Ivey? It's doable if you put in work and enough people have done it that you're not blazing any trails.
basically everyone is beginning their processes late Oct/early Nov.. Apps will be out mid-Oct from what Im hearing
Currently open for SA 2018:
BMO Capital Markets (Toronto and Montreal)
Macquarie
Credit Suisse (Calgary)
RBC should open soon, along with the others as their information sessions begin/continue.