With recruiting timeline as accelerated as it is and firms using exploding offers, what's the general opinion on canceling/reneging SA or FT offers to go to a "better" place? Assuming you inform the firm, are respectful and don't give too many details about where you're going, how big is the risk of your new firm finding out and losing both offers? Would you actually lose the second firm if they found out you reneged another firm?
Getting way ahead of myself here but I don't want to have to think this through if the situation arises with the time ticking and more stress.
This has to some extent been discussed for the US but since recruiting is less networking based in Europe and culture is not exactly the same I wanted to get a London perspective.
If you accept an offer from a European or MM bank, and subsequently receive an offer from an American BB, I would even encourage you to renege in that scenario.
this is not great advice. The difference between banks in Europe is relatively low. At such an early stage in your career you don't want to start breaking bridges by reneging. Especially if you spent your summer in a decent team at a bank and you enjoyed it. Most banks will recruit you into ECM/DCM or their worse groups so you're not much better off. Also in London it's not like everyone will exit to PE in two years and that groups/banks matter that much. In order is languages>deal exp/investor mindset>bank name/group. So long your group gives you exposure to a deal or two a year you'll be fine. It's much better to be the top analyst in your group than the worse analyst at a better firm.
I was thinking in terms of the medium-term trajectory of certain European banks e.g. UBS and DB. I agree that the group / bank name in London matters less than in the US for buy-side recruiting but ideally you will be joining a team that has relative stability for the next few year. If OP accepted an offer from DB but subsequently received one from Citi, there are strong reasons to renege on the former mainly owing to the uncertainty over whether DB will even have an investment bank in 12 months time.
I also disagree over the whole 'burning bridges' thing. I know several people who have reneged on offers and it doesn't seem to have affected them negatively. Clearly this is another difference between the US and London, where in the US reneging leads to all kinds of negative outcomes such as being banned from campus recruiting, but I have never seen this happen in London.
There is of course a difference between reneging an SA offer, and reneging an FT offer from a firm that you interned at; in the latter case it's probably better not to renege unless you are moving to a greatly better opportunity. I was reading OP's post as being more related to the former case where from what I've seen reneging is common, at least among the people I know
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