Getting a first finance internship is hard work, especially if that internship is a summer internship of the kind that might result in a job offer at the end of it. So would you pay £5.1k ($8k) for an eight week internship that would give you a 66% chance of getting a banking job? We’re asking, because that’s what one company is charging.
The Times first pointed out the fee-paying program at the weekend. City Internships, a company founded in 2012 by Lewis Talbot, a former member of the portfolio analytics group at BlackRock, charges students in the UK and the US thousands of pounds and dollars for the opportunity to intern in investment management, wealth management, investment banking, corporate finance, private banking, sales and trading, and… hedge funds.
The fees charged for its services are given in the table below. You’re unlikely to be able to afford these without parental assistance (and notably City Internships’ website has a section devoted to parents).
Talbot himself is now based in the firm’s Los Angeles office. His London-based colleague Paul Quinn told us that around two thirds of the “eligible” interns (those who’ve already graduated or are graduating soon) who go through City Internship’s programme receive job offers at the end of it.
So, can anyone with money get a ‘City Internship’? Apparently not. “We have a three stage screening and application programme,” says Quinn. Fees are only charged if you pass the screening and spend eight weeks (unpaid) at a bank or buy-side firm.