Reality check for IIM grads after Wall St woes

As Lehman Bros went bust, Merrill Lynch was sold and world of global high finance shook, hearts broke on Kolkata's IIM campus.

Over the weekend, as Lehman Brothers went bust, Merrill Lynch was sold and the world of global high finance shook, hearts broke on Kolkata’s IIM campus. For two students of IIM-C’s Class of 2009 who had accepted pre-placement offers only a couple of weeks ago, the immediate future was suddenly a void.

“We interned at Lehman’s London office only this summer. Work was as usual, no one had any idea that trade was declining,” one of them told ‘The Indian Express’.

The student could have been speaking for hundreds of fresh graduates at Indian Institutes of Management from Kolkata to Ahmedabad, Lucknow to Bangalore. Firms like Merrill and Lehman have been among the biggest recruiters on campus, and the investment banking and financial services sector has been setting the aspirational benchmark with offers of salaries that have ranged from $120,000 to $360,000 annually. In the 24 hours after what the global media is describing as the blackest day in decades on Wall Street, many aspirations are appearing unreasonable.

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The two IIM-C students have received no official word yet from Lehman, but the silence holds only a slim hope. “We put in 12-13 hours a day at the London office and worked on hot sectors like commodities and equity sales. Everyone there was very interested in India,” recalled the student.

A third of last year’s IIM-C batch of 291 got jobs in the investment banking and financial services sector. For summer placements, Merrill hired 18 students, Morgan Stanley 11, JP Morgan Chase 13 and HSBC Global Investment Banking Division 6. “Both Merrill and Lehman are big players as far as placements are concerned,” said IIM-C chief administrative officer Dinesh Varma. “They are good paymasters too. Probably this year we will miss them.”

At IIM, Lucknow, the mood was gloomy. Lehman has been making four or five offers every year, and last November, Merrill had shown an interest for the first time. “We were expecting a reduction in the number of offers, but the collapse of Lehman Brothers has come as a shock. Though Lehman made just one summer placement offer this time, we were hoping that would change,” said placement cell co-ordinator Rishabh Papardia.

At IIM, Ahmedabad, the Wall Street shock has translated into a gag order on students. “We have been asked not to speak to the media on the Lehman Brothers issue right now as the institute is yet to study the situation completely,” said a student.

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Mihir Lal, student coordinator of the placement cell of the institute, said: “As a policy, we don’t disclose names of individual recruiters and the number of students picked up by a particular company. Our placements are a good six months away and we have a lot of time to evaluate the situation.”

Despite the subprime crisis, 133 out of 255 students had joined the investment banking and financial services sector in last March’s placements. Besides Merrill and Lehman, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Barclays had picked up students from the Class of 2008.

IIM-A students bagged an average international salary of $119,000 last year, with the highest acceptances ranging from $ 280,000 to $ 360,000.