The summer placement process for the First-Year Postgraduate Programme and PGP-Agri Business Management (ABM) students kicked off amid tight security and confidentiality at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) on Monday.

IIM-A officials preferred to be non-committal on whether this year’s spell had bettered last year’s in the face of the receding recessionary trend.

An IIM-A official said: “The top consulting firms, our long-time recruitment partners, were back on the campus on Monday to participate in the summer placement process.”

Regulars like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays remained a familiar presence, with each taking in five interns. A senior manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland hired more than 10 summer interns in investment banking profiles in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Delhi and London. Some of the other Investment Banks include J P Morgan, Nomura, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.

The Boston Consulting Group and Bain and Co. will have 3-5 students each joining them for summer internships next April.

AT Kearney, Booz and Co and Arthur D Little were among other top overseas consulting firms that took interns.

The official release from IIM-A said: “The first day of the summer placement process for the batch of 2009-11 saw enthusiastic response from our regular partners from the fields of Investment Banking and Consulting. Most students today were placed in Investment Banking and Consulting roles.”

Himanshu Nema, Secretary, Placement Cell said summer internships are a mandatory requirement of the course and students will spend between eight and 10 weeks in these companies in April-May next year.