To all CS interns
Look, no one knows what is going to happen. Chances are, not even UBS. They haven’t had time to do proper DD, let alone come up with a clearly defined business plan for the combined entity.
Essentially the Swiss government has twisted UBS’ arm to get them to save their face and avoid their financial sector collapsing. It will take weeks, even months, until UBS comes up with a clear path and has visibility on headcount.
Until then all you can do is either sit tight and wait, or look for a backup plan. Be advised that with how quiet M&A has been the past few quarters, the job market is quite stalled.
Its a shitty situation so all I can do is wish you best of luck to all of you. You were smart enough to get a CS offer and I’m sure your careers will be fine. No one is going to hold it against you wether you rerecruit or you have to start again from 0 in the future bc of CS’ mistakes.
This industry, as harsh as it is, will always be in need of smart, hard working individuals. As long as you keep pushing, you’ll find something whether at UBS/CSFB, or elsewhere
You should ABSOLUTELY be looking for a backup plan but you may very well get to keep your CS gig.
The financial sector is getting f'ked right now. Companies aren't looking to hire right now. They're looking to cover their assets (no pun intended) and stay afloat. Good luck to all the hires. It's tough out there.
I mean they gave too much freedoms to a bunch of greedy folks aka bankers. The industry will remain same but keep hustling and know that you will land up somewhere. Don’t give up. I am an immigrant who graduated at the peak of pandemics with my offers being rescinded left right and center.
I know how it feels. All u need to do is keep ur heads down, don’t let this get to you, network network network and have some sorta savings to ride u over 6 months
Opportunities are out there. In all honesty, MMs will be happy to scoop up all of these Ivy League CS interns whose offers have been revoked by no fault of their own. Sure, might not seem like a huge prize for these people, but it’s still more than 99.9% of 22-year-olds can dream of.
They haven't lost their internship
I’m aware. But in the case that they do, they’re not left jobless. They’ll not have a hard time finding another IB offer.
Working at an MM is a fate worse than eternal damnation
Laughed at the statement about working at a MM bank being more than 99.9% of 22-year-olds can dream of. You must be one of those kids who think everyone and their grandma want to break into IBD. Let's not even get started about the sweatshop nature of many of those MMs, sub-par exit opps compared to BBs and EBs, and sub-par compensation relative to the hours worked as a literal slave.
Correct me if I’m wrong but employers will most likely see this like what happened with COVID. Let me explain:
Once COVID hit, tons of college students lost their internships. It sucked, everyone went through it BUT it was never used against students. If they had a gap in employment on their resume, then simply saying “I lost my internship due to COVID” was perfectly acceptable.
Wouldn’t this be the same thing to incoming FT or Interns if they lose their seats?? I mean it’s not their fault at all so if you had mentioned that when recruiting again, y’all should be fine. Yes, you have to put in work to find a new seat but I wouldn’t feel hindered about losing your job. It’s not your fault at all.
Best of luck to you all
I'm one of the people you mentioned who lost their internship due to COVID. Although no one has used losing my internship against me, I have since relocated to Asia and lost 2 years of tenure.
CS not dancing on your grave but if things fall through and any of you folks have summer housing you need to dump PM me..I need a place for summer. Thanks
Internship offers will be honored
Source?
Will FT offers be honored as well?
Lmfao until UBS says otherwise. I don’t think CS is going to end up having control in this situation.
Source please?
Source for that?
Currently nervous that my SA class will be rescinded.
Source?
The decision to cut interns will be the last decision they make
In the event they do honor summer analyst roles, I strongly advise that you guys still formulate a plan to recruit for different roles / firms for full-time.
I know the market unfortunately sucks but it’s because of that I doubt the full time offer rate would be good in the event they combine the summer programs
If you do not actually take time to come up with a backup plan or understand the risks going into this job, truly will be the most gen Z thing you can ever do.
This is not 2008, nothing close to it but like 2008 it is going to test who wants to be in this industry for the long haul and who mainly wanted to try it out before pivoting. In 2008, many people go laid off literally after they started (imagine that shock), or many people entered a hiring cycle where no one was hiring.
To add onto the good points in the posts above. Even if they honor Summer 2023 internships (no one knows if they will), there's a very strong chance the conversion rate will be comically low. If you have an internship this summer - i highly suggest ramping up your networking to i) look for another 2023 internship or atleast ii) prepare yourself for no return offer.
What’s the advice for the incoming UBS interns? Are they also in danger here?
Funny how things always turn out different than you expected, right? You get shitty news which brings you down, but in the end it turns out to have been a blessing in disguise (and vice versa).
I am holding a FT CS offer for the summer, but a while ago I started recruiting again since, well, CS was performing like absolute dog shit.
I have a final interview in a few days for my favourite PE fund ever, a local, extremely high-performing middle market fund. I never thought I'd be able to start full-time there without a few years in IB. Turns out I might get lucky and get to work there without going through the IB grind (besides internship then).
Keep your head up, things seldom are as bad as they seem in the beginning.
should change username to Bill Waccman, missed opportunity
Might do so
Leaving CS soon after almost 2 years to finally start my PE gig. CS was a great experience, I loved my group and very sad to see how things have unfolded. However, and this might be more relevant to current employees than incoming students, I would like to say this: "stop complaining about how the senior folks didn't give you a straight answer or outright lied to you." What choice did they have? If the CEO doesn't say everything's gonna be fine, there's going to be a run on the bank. If the head of department doesn't say your jobs and bonuses are secure, people will stop coming into offices. You should understand these dynamics and not take everything at face value when making judgements, and if you did not, you only have yourself and your naivety to blame. C'mon. You even saw the CEO getting fired only 2 weeks after he publically said the bank is fine. Yet you still thought everything's good? If you were at all surprised how things turned out, and are now frustrated to not have made any contingency plans, at least I hope this will be a valuable life lesson for you.
Give us the scoop about what's going on mate. What's the sentiment? What are people saying?
Know a lot of the Heads at CS and their friends at other banks, heard everyone's trying to leave and most likely no spin off but M Klein is pushing for his boutique deal to go through. I think that says everything
Out of curiosity does CS do M&A in their coverage groups (similar to GS) or do they have a separate M&A group?
It's a separate group at CS
Some large coverage groups have M&A group members "dispatched" to them, but mostly they will collaborate with the M&A teams
Which are the NY coverage groups which are strong at CS and relatively weak/non-existent at UBS? I am assuming Tech would be one..
^ does UBS have a good energy group 🤣
“Credit Suisse’s strength, particularly in the US and the technology sector, makes a very good fit to our strategy, where we know that technology entrepreneurs are the wealth creators of the future,” chief executive Ralph Hamers said on a call with analysts Sunday night. Hamers also wants to retain bankers specialising in pharmaceuticals, media and telecoms, which UBS believes will provide a pipeline of wealthy customers for its private bank.
seems like those two coverage groups will be integrated
Tech was absolutely ravaged in the last 18 months. Only one MD with a tenure longer than a year and he was a 2022 new promote. Newly hired MDs with maybe one exception are A) absolute nightmares to work for B) ass at their job. Would not count on the group being integrated.
Yeah at most they might keep Wah and dump the rest
Reached out to HR and it’s bad.
Care to elaborate?
Based off of what they said to me, I don’t think they’re going to honor internship offers.
Based off of what they said to me, I don’t think they’re going to honor internship offers.
Based off of what they said to me, I don’t think they’re going to honor internship offers.
Bro you can’t just say this and not elaborate
Bruh you can't just drop the hint like this...
Post email or you're full of shit
talking about not wanting to create FUD and does this
just fuck off
You'd have to be delusional not see the writing on the wall - you guys are going into M&A and should know what's coming. There will be massive layoffs across CS, particularly in IB, and the largest piece of the pie to cut are the analysts and associates. No one knows, that's true, but the writing is on the wall. You shouldn't feel comfortable with a return of internship offer and should be preparing yourself in case things don't work out with UBS.
I'm at the Ares conference and spoke to a senior Managing Partner who left CS a year ago and he says everyone he knows at CS has NO FUCKING IDEA what's going on. This includes literally everyone in CS Financial Sponsors.
There is not some secret that MDs know that you aren't privy to. It's going to be brutal but nobody knows how much.
Thanks for the info
just a very shitty situation to be in for everyone involved
It doesn't matter if CS keeps the internship or rescinds it because return offer rates will be literally 0%. So I would start preparing for FT recruiting (in every industry, not just IB) if I was incoming CS
How do you know return offers will be near 0%? Do you have concrete facts and logic that back this, or are you just projecting your current state of mind on this forum?
I think it is reasonable to assume there will be no return for CS this summer especially for IBD as there will be a huge lay off after the UBS merger (don’t even know whether CS will still honor the SA offer to us). So there is no loss to prepare for FT recruiting after this summer—we can’t risk our job on a sinking ship.
Agree with not risking our job on a sinking ship!
Around 10-15% of total employee base for UBS and CS is in US. May be 10 coverage groups for CS with ~50 bankers on average per group. ~500 coverage bankers is less then 1% of UBS's global workforce (which has ~150 coverage bankers in US?) - which they can absorb easily. They have also indicated UBS's favorable stance towards US advisory. If we consider the natural attrition over the past year at CS given all the uncertainty, UBS will likely not have to do any mass layoffs. Obviously, nothing is 100% certain.
Also, UBS talked about synergies in "global banking" (which I guess is UBS-speak for IB advisory) and reducing risk-weighted assets to 25%. Correct me if I'm wrong, but firing people in US Advisory is not gonna free up any risk-weighted assets. Most of the lay offs have to be come from sales trading, securitized products etc. and largely from Europe and Middle-East.
This is a nice take, mostly agree but reality is we don't know / are guessing. I heard indirectly from Heads at CS that they haven't received any info from UBS and are trying to convince them to absorb the entire US advisory while actively trying to leave themselves. If anything, that's not a good sign
Securitized products has already been acquired by Apollo early this year
There's really no point cancelling internship offers for a bank, when the merger is not even close to completion. The cost-savings from not hiring interns for 9 weeks is less than marginal. That said, looking back at what happend at Merrill Lynch when it got bought out by BofA during GFC, none of the ML interns got return offers. It was a long time ago, but I still remember seeing hundreds of interns just leaving Merrill building with a complete shock on their faces at 250 Vesey St. I was at another bank at that time and things were pretty bad, but we did give return offers to most of our summer class. Not exactly the same situation, but I'd expect return offer rates to be pretty dismal for "CS" interns this year and even the ones who get should be worried about being cancelled or fired before even their first bonus. For full-time employees, massive layoffs will most likely begin right before bonus season. (BofA ended up cutting more than 90% of ML people or 35,000 employees at the time.)
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