Finance is back

After a few years in wilderness and an average show, Finance was the 'King" once again at the B-schools. Last year, it had to share the spotlight with marketing, Venture Capitalists, IT and consultancy. This year, it was finance all the way. Though markets aren't exactly booming as in last year first quarter, but the major players have aggressive plans for the retail banking sectors and insurance sectors. UTI Bank freezed its recruitements after its merger with Global Trust Bank. ICICI put up a spirited show, a far cry from last year's placement, where it made "mindboggling" 30+ number of offers at IIMA and IIMB each, and faced equally mindboggling rejections also.

Overseas "bulge-bracket" banks took students for mainly investment banking and equity research divisions, besides some for Internal Consultancy Groups. Lehman Brothers was star recruiter with 13, 8 and 7 offers at IIMA, IIMB and IIMC respectively. Deutsche Bank Global also led way with 6,4 offers at IIMC, IIMB respectively. Capital One (leading credit card player which has scared the wits out of banking giants Citibank and other banks) also made its debut and made 6 offers at IIMB.

The opportunities were offered in corporate and investment banking, funds management, retail banking, project and infrastructure finance. ICICI was leading recruiter with 11 offers at XLRI, and 20, 26 and 10 offers at IIMC, IIMB and IIML respectively, for its various sister firms, whereas Citibank took 6 students for its global finance division. HSBC also offered London postings with high salary of Rs 12 lakhs(???), amusing alumni in the process as it also contains London Fare! HSBC made 47+ offers across 10+ B-schools with 10,3,5 and 7 offers at IIMC, IIMB, IIML and Bajaj respectively. Citibank made 38+ offers with 10,4,8 and 7 offers at IIMC, IIMB, IIML and Bajaj. Foreign banks and corporate, like GE Countrywide consumer-financing opportunities, also made many offers with GE making 10 offers at XLRI and offering a high of Rs 14.5 lakhs at lateral placements at IIMK. At IIMB, GE Caps also made few lateral offers with ICICI, HSBC, ABN Amro, SBI Caps, Citibank being other players. BNP Paribas was another major recruiter with 3 offers at IIMK.

Over 30% of graduating class opted for finance career at IIMA, IIMC, IIMK, XLRI, whereas it was almost 40% at IIMB and IIM Indore and 20% at IIML. Bajaj saw 33% of class opting for finance career and it was 15% at SP Jain. Corresponding figures were 29% at FMS and 18% at MDI. Figures were low at IMT (13%), XIMB (13%) and IIFT (4%), as these are traditionally marketing bastions. NITIE, having engineering focus and an operations stronghold, was also low with 11% of class going for a finance career.

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