ICAP Summer Position

As a broker intern, you're definitely going to be getting a lot of tea/coffe/breakfast/lunch. Brokers are the people who stand in-between traders in the exact way that a real estate agent stands between the buyer and seller of the home. In fact, they get paid largely in the same way (as a percentage of the notional transaction, delineated by product). The more complex the product, the longer it takes to put a deal together, and the larger the payoff to the broker.

That said, brokers of exotic products don't see much flow, so I don't know if they make the same as some of the more flow products (non-deliverable forwards; interest rate swaps; cross currency swaps; swaptions; vanilla options on FX, STIRs, equity indices, single stocks, commodities, etc.). Try to sit on either the power desk or the IR swaps/cross-currency swap/swaptions desk.

Your whole goal is to get the brokers to like you, because as a broker, it's a 100% people business. You HAVE to have relationships with traders, otherwise, no one is going to use your broking services. Harlow's/Garban's/ICAP is huge, but I can use BGC, Cantor, Tullet Prebon, or Tradition just by pressing a different button on my speaker box.

As a broker, you take traders out for drinks/dinner/special events to make sure they use you instead of someone else. As a junior at a broking house, you're going to be a 'go-for,' and might deliver me lunch one day. Your goal is to meet with and get to know the traders, so you can eventually have your own book of clients, and make yourself (what could be) quite a bit of money.

Some brokers take home 30% of commissions from trades. Some take home 70-80%, but don't earn any salary. If you're a broker for, say, non-deliverable forwards, a firm like GS pays $100 per million dollars of notional done. In a given day, if you have a few good trader relationships, you could easily put through 100mio USD of notional NDFs. That's $10k in a day for the firm, of which, you could be taking home 3k-8k. This is, of course, after you have a book of clients, which could take a few years.

Until then, you had better be ready to be a bit of a toady.

Thanks brotherbear, I had a general understanding of what a broker does but that definitely helps. Any idea of what I can expect to be asked during the phone interview? Any general concepts I should know? Thanks again.

Sorry to bring up this topic again, butI have this interview this week, anyone have any last minute tips

Good firm, big exposure in commodities and rates. Worked on both kinds of desks, ICAP always got the bulk of our business, along with some others.

Hows the career path of someone in the business, if one decides to pursue something outside of IDB after their SA internship, what could he or she apply to?

sky is the limit Short.

Thanks.

Does anyone have any knowledge of how many interns they end up converting to a FT offer? It seems that in the business the ratio is a bit less.

I had a final round yesterday and may have to make a decision between this and an S&T OPS role. While IDB is FO, it seems the tasks im going to be doing are pretty remedial and may not learn as much.

100% take ICAP over ops. Broking is much more similar to sales and trading than ops is. Also if you get an offer from ICAP and don't manage to get anything in S&T, IDB is a much better career path than ops. We had a few people on my old desk who were brokers and moved into sales - there was no one who came from ops except 50 year old traders from back in the day when you didn't even need a degree to join a trading desk.

ICAP is a top notch shop. In a good year a Broker could make as much or more than a S&T ops person easily. Granted you gots to be buying lots of wine and steaks.

I read a post that an average broker would make as much as a trader on an verage year. While I understand the upside for a trader would be much higher, is the statement fairly accurate?

Also can anyone confirm the high conversion rates for US interns.

I heard for London they took about 5 out of 15 interns FT, with only 1 broker but was told that ICAP US takes most of their interns FT.

Appreciate all the help guys.

dont think that it is easy to be a broker.. its hard work and most will not make it.. keep that in mind

bumping this thread....

anyone know average icap summer intern salary?

Wow its been awhile....

Summer intern salary was pretty low, but honestly i wouldn't take pay into consideration for summer offers. Place it against your other offers. Friends that ended up taking the full time offers there seem quite happy now. Really great internship and had a ton of fun (you will too if your outgoing).

My opinion:

IB/ST > Brokering > Ops/backoffice

Pay for first years was not great. I believe it was 55k + ~10k bonus at the end of the year. As a first year (just like any trading desk) your support and your not bringing in business.

It may have changed now, but when full time offers were given out, you were not 100% sure of what desk you would be placed on (unless you tried pre-arranging it before). What desk you are on, the people that are on it, the flow or volume, and the willigness of those above you to hand down clients fully determines your pay and/or job security. For example, at the time the MBS desk was dead, but made money hand over fist previous to the crisis. Some desks however, always do well, the treasuries desk there "Treasure Island" has brokers there who make mid 7-figures, however you can imagine the amount of people wanting to get into that role. In the end, its all up to the product you trade and the opportunity for you to get a book. No such thing as average pay but saw that everyone with a book that I worked with lived very comfortably.

Lifestyle to me was amazing. 7 - 5PM at the latest, go out with clients about once a week, bring them out to the fanciest places, best concerts, nicest clubs. (This is if your clients are around your age, some desks have older brokers/clients).

It's very much a lifestyle job. I've met brokers who go out nearly every night of the week and who basically know the name of every single waiter's grandmother at a couple restaurants they go to every week. This doesn't really apply for your internship but landing a few whales will go a long way with making your job safer/better paid. For that, make sure you keep in touch with anyone you know from school who is going into trading. And while banks do the most business, some corp treasuries have huge cash balances and funding needs to address as well.

And it helps to be able to talk shop with traders. While the brokers I've met were all very personable, the top guy I met was both very charismatic and constantly cooking up some exotic funding options to get the trader thinking.

Hello all, this isn't in line with the discussion of intern salary, but I hope those who had gone through the summer intern interview process can help me here. For those of you who had gotten the offer, after the panel interview, was there any further rounds of selection before the offer was given?