Capital Markets Summer Intern Review

Throughout the internship there was a lot to do; from networking with other interns/grads/senior employees to getting involved with work on deals and going to client meetings.

Graduates were very willing to get me involved and were helpful if the task proved to be difficult.

I rarely felt completely lost and there was always a line manager on hand to assist if I needed help.

Varied from day to day depending on the workload on the desk - sometimes it would be slow, but I had a project to work on in that time so was never without anything to do.

I was mainly working on slides for pitchbooks and excel docs that would be presented to clients. I'm not sure about how much was re-edited after I submitted it to my line manager though. I think if I had wanted to take on more responsibility it would have been available though.

The skills I developed of working to deadlines etc. were probably present and I don't do a financial degree, so it will be of limited use for that, but for my career, I'm sure it will prove useful to know, even if I didn't chose to go into banking.

Most people seemed to enjoy working there. One or two people left while I was there, but there was still high spirits all round, including within the people who left.

I never felt as though I needed more explaining or that I didn't know where I should be. Events were posted well in advance and accurately communicated what I needed to do.

The internship was well paid - competitive with most other banks I've heard of. Time-wise, there was always someone willing to give me a teaching session or talk to me about something I didn't understand.

If offered the job, I think it is very likely that I would take it. The office atmosphere seemed very friendly and quite optimistic despite a potentially uncertain future. The other interns also seemed mostly very friendly and great fun to hang out with.

There was probably on average at least one event per week for interns and grads and sometimes a lot more. In terms of going out, I think that there is the obvious issue that markets and IB have very different hours so traders for example may not be as willing to stay out as late as IB or Capital markets interns.

In bars and clubs, drinks were London prices, which is very expensive but no different to any other internships in London/big cities. In terms of where I lived, I stayed with family so the cost of living is not very representative.

I only went to a few clubs during the internship as I was quite tired at the end of the day. The ones I did go to were quite fun but were small London clubs which just tended to be a bit pretentious.

There was an interns sports day as well as an office softball tournament. On top of this there were various other reasons to not be stuck behind a desk. In capital markets, the events at night overlapped working hours so I probably got a better deal in terms of working hours than some of the traders got.