Deadlines for 2016 summer internships in Singapore closed late last year and banks have now chosen the new cohorts of over-achieving students who will join them in a few months.
A few public profiles of Singaporean ‘incoming interns’ have already started to appear online, although not for all banks.
If you’re wondering why you didn’t get selected for an internship yourself (or if you want to know who you’ll be up against in a few months), here’s a selection of 2016 interns to inspire you.
Woon Yeow Tay, Standard Chartered: competition master
Tay comes battle-hardened to Stan Chart, having spent the past two years piling up high rankings in various finance competitions: CFA-NTU Investment Research Challenge; UOB-NUS National Case Competition; Maybank GO Ahead Challenge; BAML’s Banking Connections Program; Unilever Clear Case Challenge…and others. He’s even proved his ‘leadership credentials’ by helping to organise a few contests himself, such as the 2014 Singapore Business Case Competition.
Edwin Heng, Rothschild: Mr Singapore
You don’t have to be beautiful to be an investment banking intern, but it helps. In 2013 Heng won the Mister Singapore male beauty pageant and then finished in the top-seven in Mister International. It also helps that Heng comes armed with internships from across the finance sector: he was a private banking assistant at UOB, a listings intern at SGX and worked for research company REAPRA.
Tim Yeow, OCBC: stepping up into IBD
Can you be an intern in consumer banking, then asset management and finally investment banking? Yes, if you’re Yeow – who’s manged to progress in that order from DBS to Eastspring Investments and now to OCBC. He’s also an HSBC student ambassador at the National University of Singapore, which has enabled him to “network with senior HSBC executives”. And he appears to have excelled during his National Service – in 2011 and 2012 he led policemen overseeing 250 military detainees.
Jitesh Gurnani, DBS: back to front office
The McGill University student did a stint at DBS in 2013 and won an award as the bank’s best intern in its technology and operations division. Rather astonishingly during this time, Gurnani “led a team of interns and temporary staff in the development and implementation of a project”. Now, after internships at Religare and Citi, he’s returning to DBS this summer but will be working in the front office – in debt capital markets.
Nick Tan, ReEx Capital Asia: boutique player
Boutiques like ReEx Capital Asia, which specialises in clean energy investment banking and consulting, don’t hire too many interns. Tan appears to have got through the door on the strength of his internships at three other niche firms, even though they were on the buy-side: Golden Equator Capital, Expara Ventures and Operating Partners. Tan also has two other things that employers love to see on intern CVs – a passion for a particular sector (his first internship was also in clean energy) and business savviness (he’s vice president of the entrepreneurship society at Singapore Management University).
Kaushik Suresh, Standard Chartered: extracurricular star
Banks love extracurricular activities, especially those done for a charitable cause and especially those that demonstrate leadership potential. In his spare time Suresh founded Singai Thamizhan, a non-profit initiative helping “raw talent in our Indian Community in the field of fine arts”. He also comes with an assortment of other internships (Great Eastern, KPMP and J.P. Morgan) and he represented Singapore in under-19 cricket.
Ivan Yew Ming Lim, Citi: corporate expertise
Banks don’t just look at previous internships in the finance sector when deciding who to hire. Lim’s previous stints were with Malaysian property firm Sonata Resources (where he “participated in strategic financial and operational discussions”) and Singaporean promotions company Redwoods Advance. Like Yeow, he did well during National Service and was given a platoon best soldier’ award for outstanding leadership.
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