List of banks who laid off workers/had low return offer rates in 2020

Starting this thread to hold banks w low return offer rates or banks that laid off workers accountable and public for future reference

Feel free to include which divisions had layoffs, or what return rates were for interns

Comment banks below

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Nomura: Anectodally would say it's anywhere from 30-50% depending on the group DB: Slaughter RBC: Some groups were 50% others were higher than in previous years HL: C&R NY apparently had 0% but yeah slaughter as well

 

we get it, you like to lick boots- also nobody in the actual thread said anything about "keeping them accountable" aside from OP it's moreso just so people can share information about which banks shit the bed

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
 
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I think sharing information on what banks navigated this well vs those who didn’t is good/fine, and also to discuss who seems to be handling things well now. So I don’t want to sidetrack from this too much, but I think it is also helpful to understand why some of these numbers are what they are (put yourself in the shoes of management at these places). And keep in mind that those who are ok today won’t necessarily be the places that are ok tomorrow, this was quite a shock to the financial system.

In most of these situations it wasn’t “let’s screw over the interns”, but rather a shock related to covid that disrupted many parts of the industry and has continued to play out in a way that has been hard to plan for.

What I’m saying is:

1) when covid hit banks were impacted, some more than others. Some knew right away that this would be bad for them, others needed to see how it would play out 2) with that, banks had options: cancel the internship (sucks for the candidate, no experience on resume, potentially no pay) or try to do best efforts to keep the recruiting pipes open, with the chance that offers might be low due to demand and the financial situation - there was (and continues to be) an unknown of the impact to the firms 3) Firms that were hit hard and continued to struggle (due to either poor management or just a bit of bad luck around their specialization and revenue makeup), needed to cut costs 4) imagine being someone inside the firm, management is going to protect their valuable employees and those with experience/training while still trying to bring in top talent (in a reasonable way). They are just making business decisions here.

I’m not saying it doesn’t suck for interns, but just put yourself in the shoes of management at these firms. Reputation risk at top colleges is definitely a concern, but so is employee retention, and reputation risk if you hire people just to fire them before they even start (or right after starting).

I personally think it was better for these places to give the experience (I.e. not cancel the internship) and try to bring back the top performers than anything else. It isn’t an easy decision.

Final thought, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure places handled this poorly (bad communication and expectation setting, poorly managing the crisis and being further in financial trouble), but the internship is a relatively smaller concern for these groups when dealing with such a large issue to the financial markets as we are now.

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