Urgent: Top-Tier Bank Rescinds 2024 IB Grad Offer - London - Advice Needed!
Hi everyone,
I'm in a bit of a dilemma and would appreciate any insights or advice from the community. Here’s the situation:
In November 2023, I received a written job offer from this Bulge Bracket, for a graduate position based in London, in Investment Banking, starting in July 2024. Both parties signed the contract; no problems, right? Just for context, as this becomes important later, on the application form where I first applied for the position, one of the requirements is having a “Completion of Studies” date on-or-after August 1st, 2023.
Well, two weeks after the offer was signed, sometime in late November/early December 2023, I got a call from HR asking why I put August 1, 2023, as my completion of studies date on the application form, when my CV said my university education ended in June 2023 (their tone and language here was heavily insinuating I lied on the form and did this to bypass screening). The explanation is very simple. My CV listed an expected end date based on what my university provided to me prior to applying for the job, whereas my job application form listed the date of award on my official academic transcript, being 1st of August 2023. I subsequently sent over my transcript, to which HR put IN WRITING, that “because my Awarding Date was 1st of August 2023, I was within the eligibility period and there was no issue”, or something to that effect.
However, very recently, the HR department called to inform me that my offer was being rescinded. They claimed that the background check revealed that my last examination was on June 2, 2023, which they interpreted as my completion date, thus rendering me ineligible. I contested this interpretation and provided a letter from my university stating that June 2 was only an expected end date and that the official awarding of my degree was August 1, 2023, and my time as a student officially ended on 20th of September 2023 (making me also well within eligibility).
This was reviewed internally, and they came back to me in writing a couple of days ago that my offer was being taken away and I no longer have a place on the graduate scheme, not even 3 months before I was due to start.
As I said above, over 5 months before this issue arose, I had clarified this same date with HR, and they confirmed in writing that the August 1 transcript date was not a problem. It feels as though they might be using this as a pretext to rescind my offer, potentially to cut costs.
Has anyone here faced a similar situation or have any advice on how to handle this dispute with a major bank’s HR department? Any insights on how to proceed or if there are specific practical steps I should take would be greatly appreciated.
I have been badly burned by this situation – I have turned down other fantastic opportunities in IB to work for this Bulge Bracket, and now all recruiting cycles are shut. Since I graduated in 2023, I feel I am no longer going to be eligible for other grad programs as it is too late. Even if I was, the earliest I would be able to start work would be the Summer of 2025. I have committed financially to an apartment to move out (as I was fully intending on starting the job) but HR does not seem to be interested or want to hear. They just interrupt me with their robotic script when I try to reason with them. I now have no job, no leads, and an apartment I must pay for. What does one even do in this situation? I am not one to despair, but all advice I have received from close friends and family has NOT been actionable advice ("keep your chin up", "keep going", "if it was not meant to be, it was not meant to be"). I just feel patronised and quite frankly, screwed over.
Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
Yours faithfully,
GoingNuts33
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If everything is in writing, hire a lawyer and go over your options. Lawyers will be okay taking payment later if the case seems strong against a big bank.
Make ‘em pay, champ. Reduce DJ Sol’s bonus if they have to.
How'd you know its gs
curious about this
They're the only "top bank" I've seen pop up on LinkedIn for new Analyst positions.
This is the advice you need. Imo - don’t listen to those who say ‘you are a good candidate, accept and move on’. You RIGHTFULLY got a position that was agreed to by them. You declined other positions to be at the BB, you have every right to claim compensation. I would be on the phone to the lawyer as i’m writing this if i was in this position.
If you want to take the revenge route and hire a lawyer, you can do as above poster and negotiating payment after the case closed as you might potentially have a good case.
But it is clear that someone in the bank was pulling some strings to make sure you did not get the offer either to hire another candidate with strong connections at the top or just cost cutting reasons. Either way, you should understand that this whole event is not really about your graduation date (HR is just using it as a tool to leverage its position), but rather the bank trying to achieve its ultimate goal of saving cost/opening up space.
I would not take it personally as you are probably a good candidate - seems like something is going on in the background that is out of your control unfortunately.
Yes, but once the L-word is invoked, you do not come back from that - then this could even potentially bring reputational risk onto me? As in no other banks would hire me if my name was in a Lawsuit with a BB. I just want to work in Banking, do well in my career, and learn.
Besides, I do not think many (good) lawyers would want to work for a fresh graduate who isn't really in the Industry yet. Worse yet, if I lose, I would also need to pay their legal fees as well.
Quite difficult.
If you still want to be in banking then yes going legal will definitely cause noise as finance industry is a very small industry where people talk everywhere and create a barrier between you and your finance career.
Most optimal response if I were you is to study GMAT and aim for top Masters (likes of LBS MFA, Oxford FinEcon, LSE, etc.) while recruiting heavily on the side so you hedge against both of your bets (if you don't get a job offer, you still get second shot in Masters - if you get an offer you just cancel your Masters plan)
That’s insane… I feel you bro. I agree that the graduation date is only an excuse for them to rescind the offer. One of my colleagues lied on his CV by several months to get the internship and when FT offer came HR questioned it but the head of the team stepped in and it was all sorted out.
When did the background check begin?
Sorry to hear you’ve been screwed, incredibly poor form of them.
This ‘policy’ can’t be set in stone and imagine it’s likely a cover for over-hiring. Seen many masters students do summer internships on the basis of being in their ‘penultimate’ year (since graduation is typically January)
Does your university have alums (ideally senior) in the firm who you can speak with to bat for you? What's the career center's relationship with HR? You need to pull strings/get those two institutions involved bilaterally.
This sounds like a very stressful situation to be in and I feel you for. Just remember that many many extremely successful people in this industry have had similar shit situations happens early on (offers rescinded, entire team laid off within months of joining, restructuring, internships not converted etc.) and still ended up in amazing spots in a matter of months/1-2 years. Reach out to the UK recruiters (Kea, Dartmouth etc) and succinctly explain your case and position (position yourself as a strong candidate in a shit spot, instead of just someone they should feel sorry for). Some banks will have last minute dropouts and openings come up in the coming months as well - just make sure you catchup with your network at various banks so they are aware you are looking. Keep yourself open to segments you might not have considered before but have lots of open analyst roles now (private credit, secondaries etc) at good funds.
You'll be fine. Look forward to working with you once you join the industry. Best of luck.
Can someone even explain the ostensible reason HR is giving to revoke the offer? The kid said he would graduate in August, but is now graduating in June? Why does graduating a few months early even matter?
OP, please don’t listen to all the people telling you to lawyer up. You must keep in mind that most users who remain here are kids or people in their twenties who don’t have much life or work experience. Wtf lawsuit are you going to bring? They rescinded your offer on a bizarre technicality and you want how much recompense? First year salary? More? You think a well respected lawyer is going to bother suing for such a small transgression?
There is no actionable advice you can realistically take here against the bank. You’re a new hire that got done dirty for some odd reason. Life f*cked you over, but suing the bank will unfortunately not be a good use of your time or money, especially if they can wiggle out of responsibility by using legalese in your contract. Maybe pay a lawyer a small fee to read your contract and see if they agree with what the bank is saying.
My advice is to try to break your apartment lease, and start applying to other jobs. Reach out to banks you rejected and explain the situation, perhaps they will be sympathetic to your cause.
I understand your anger and bewilderment and frustration. It sounds like you are collateral damage from something internal at the bank. Keep emailing HR and explain how this is insane and you will be severely impacted financially. Reach out to the group head who hired you. But I don’t think suing will be effective at all.
This is correct. You are an at will employee
Will the real MD please stand up
reach out to your school's career services too and say you got an offer rescinded
OP, was it your intention to make yourself eligible by putting in what is "technically correct" graduation date? It reads to me as though the position was meant to be for the graduating class that comes after you. Why didn't you get the FT offer for your year like the rest of your classmates?
If this is the case, you'd be the one with the "wrong" graduation year even if the bank didn't rescind your offer - I don't see how a "legal" response to this would be successful, not to mention the severe negative repercussions that would come with that for your career (although I do have sympathy for your Catch-22 which may be that without this you wouldn't have a career).
This is insane, sorry this happened to you man. Some shady stuff going on here, I thought you'd blatantly lied when I started reading but you've genuinely just been screwed over here.
This is absolutely absurd and beyond a joke. I’m so sorry you’re in this position. Can you narrow down which BB this was:
1) JPM/MS/GS or 2) DB/UBS/CITI
It's either GS or JPM because no other bank has been hiring new analysts.
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Regardless of those saying it would ruin your reputation, I would still consult an attorney. Getting counsel does not necessarily imply a lawsuit has to take place. You should protect your rights when corresponding with the bank on this matter and the lawyer will know the best course of action. You can just flag to them that you want to avoid publicity. Even if it comes to that, there are ways to maintain privacy in litigation and I doubt the public would even care about some small-time lawsuit brought by a rando. Not exactly headline material, it's not that deep.
I'm currently going through the exact situation ... think it's the same bank. I don't know what to do.
Name and Shame is the only way to get progress on this forum. Or else it’s just pissing into the wind
I would ignore what Smoke Frog is saying. "Lawyer up" may be a plausible path considering that (i) you paid in advance for an apartment (assuming it's a considerable cost), and (ii) you rejected other offers to take this one (assuming you also got their offers and opted for this one, and didn't stopped mid-selection process, because it's a weak argument to say "if I had continued, I could have gotten an offer"). Civil Courts are full of such cases between contractual parties, landlords, service providers, etc. even for sums as low as a thousand Pounds. If you can get also a bigger copensation because you're tied to paying the rent for medium or long term, or even you get a bigger compensation because of "lost opportunities" i.e. other IB offers with high compensation, a lawyer could perfectly be interested and maybe you can give him a % of what you get to not pay in advance to incentivize him to request as much as possible (Courts may also take your side, a poor student vs. a big bank *wink wink*)
However, I'm a bit confused about the timeline of what you're saying:
Because if you finished as soon as June 2 2023, why you didn't inform promptly HR? I mean, it's a still a shitty argument from their side, but this could have been really bulletproof to avoid any sort of issues in the future considering that you also received the job offer 4-5 months later. HR also may also have been skepticaly about the letter produced by your university because they may assume the letter stating precisely 1st August is like the university taking side with the student on what HR sees as a sort of lack of sincerity from the student.
Question that it's unclear to me: When did you really get the graduation certificate? June 2? August 1st? or September 20th?
***
More questions:
1. "Completion of Studies" date on-or-after August 1st, 2023, but your time as a student ended 20th of September 2023?
2. Why after graduating, you simply did not inform HR that you actually graduated on X date?
3. In writing etc. etc., or "something to that effect" - the something to that effect also should be checked.
4. Lastly, it depends exactly how the wording is framed in the offer.
I'm poining the timeline and the questions because those may be some small things which HR may use to its advantage to argue their position, but if those also tend to be in your favor then why not, push them more. Just understand that you're not going to get any offer and moreover I wouldn't want to work in a firm that tried to dump me, because your IB sting will be full of anxiety thinking that HR may one of those days call you and find any sort of reason to throw your off, which wll affect your satisfication and work quality. Any sort of pressure you'll put on HR is mostly on recovering some of your costs and compensation for lost opportunities which are legit complaints and which would also piss me off. It's a shitty situation, but if you're not really interested in recovering your costs, then start looking for something else.
"Checked internally" is bullshit, they probably had a 2 minute talk with a senior asking "Hey, this guy said ABC" to which the senior said "We need to shrink the candidate pool, just refuse it". It's clearly a dirty HR finding any sort of small twists to rescind your offer. See above another guy complaining about the same issue. Maybe you can find more people that experienced this and together put a collective (class action) lawsuit? This may now be of a higher interest for a lawyer (or at least can be used as leverage in negotiating with HR at least to pay for some expenses you inccured in advance).
I could check your contract if you want. More because of curiosity considering that this may be the most retarded HR move I have ever heard of, but also it's a slow weekend. If you also want to hide your personal details an send me the correspondence, I could also take a look. Let me know.
Fyi guys, the bank is DEUTSCHE BANK.
and OP said a "bulge bracket" lmao
Update?
Sounds like DB, one of the few banks that actually require final year Summer Analysts to actually do a masters to be eligible for the grad programme
What other banks in London are that strict?
Only DB from what I’ve seen
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