MUMBAI: The subprime crisis seems to have spread its reach to the IIMs as well. Being a student at one of the premier B-schools might have meant getting an easy entry with big companies for summer internships, but the 2007-09 batch had a slightly tougher time. Major financial companies, that recruited from the various IIMs, took in less number of students this year. Lehman Brothers, which recruited 17 students last year from IIM-A, picked up only 15 this year. In a similar trend, Merrill Lynch which picked up 14 last year, took in one less this year.
At IIM-B, Lehman recruited 13 students this year when compared to 17 last year. Merrill Lynch picked up 10 students this year, five less from previous year. Both these firms have been badly effected by the ongoing crisis in the global markets. Lehman cut over 1,300 jobs while Merrill Lynch laid off more than 1,100 people. Incidentally, global firms such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, which have not been severely effected, have increased their intakes this year.
Consulting firms McKinsey, Bain and AT Kearney also recruited less this year. Last year, their combined intake was 11 while this year, it stood at eight. In a sector-wise break up of summer internships, the intake by the financial sector dropped from 57% last year to 35.9% this year at IIM-A. Consulting and marketing, however, increased from 17% and 14%, to 22.4% and 20.5%, respectively. PE firms like Blackstone, Temasek Holdings, ChrysCapital, Greater Pacific Capital and Sabre Capital made the most of this and recruited a number of students from B-schools.
IIM-B placements chairman Sourav Mukherji, however, does not read too much into this. He says, “The placement interviews are done in November of the previous year. There are always fluctuations. During the placements they did not mean much, but if you are to look at the numbers now, it might seem like a change.”
The industry, according to him, was forecasting a downturn and with no recoveries from the mortgage crisis and people hedging, intern numbers were marginally down for some companies but overall there was no change in summer placements. Incidentally smaller Indian companies seem to have been benefited by the global turmoil in the markets.
Indian I-banking firms like Edelweiss, Kotak, Mape Advisory, Enam Securities and ICICI Securities took in more than 25 people from IIM-B alone. Smaller companies like Angel Trade, Lodha Group and NIIT were also some of the recruiters at the IIMs this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment