Friday, July 22, 2011

Fewer Perks and More Work for Wall St.’s Summer Interns

According to the NY Times Dealbook, Wall Street interns have gone from pampered to pummeled. In better days, college-age interns at the nation’s largest investment banks, known as summer analysts, were treated like young royalty. But shrinking profits and a spate of recent bank layoffs have forced this year’s interns to shoulder full-time workloads.

“I worked 85 hours last week!” said one Goldman Sachs summer analyst, a college senior who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not allowed to speak to the media.

“The last two days, I’ve been here until 3 a.m.,” said a Deutsche Bank analyst, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “My weekends are fun, but that’s about it.”

While hard work has been customary among young finance workers for years, after-hours benefits once made the long days more palatable. In 2006, a group of JPMorgan Chase interns took a firm-sponsored trip in white Hummer limousines to the trendy NoHo nightclub Butter, where they partied before retiring to swank rooms at the Hudson Hotel, according to a person who was present. The next year Lehman Brothers took interns to Jones Beach for a concert featuring OK Go and the Fray, and Credit Suisse paid for its interns to take gourmet cooking classes, according to former interns at the banks.

Those extravagances are gone, experts say, victims of slashed entertainment budgets and increased sensitivity at banks whose reputations suffered during the financial crisis….

Read more at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/fewer-perks-and-more-work-for-wall-st-s-summer-interns/

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