Brice Laurent
Participant London Banking Tour 2009

As an economics student at the University of Amsterdam I have always been fascinated by the exiting stories around Investment Banking. The glamorous, fast moving and ‘work hard play hard’ world described in ‘Liar’s poker’ or ‘Wall street’ is something that always attracted my attention. My interest in the subject started growing while I was studying abroad, in Milan, at Universita Luigi Bocconi. Surrounded with Students from major European Business schools, and in the middle of the financial crisis; the subject was heavily discussed. Number of students had just finished their summer internship and received an offer to start their career the following summer. As I was finishing my bachelors, I was eager to get some professional experience by doing an internship abroad in the financial sector. The London Banking Tour was the perfect opportunity for me to get in contact with people working in the city and eventually secure an intern position within a major bank in London.

The banks and the LBT organisation selected 22 students, I was delighted to be one of them. We left Amsterdam on a Sunday and arrived in rainy London were old LBT participants joined us for drinks in the city center. Surprising was the amount of Dutch investment bankers that participated in the LBT before. After a few proper English drinks; we all went to our hotel, impatient to start the week.

Every day of the week we visited 2 banks. Typically, the day started with an introduction on the banks’ organisation, structure, and a brief explanation on the activities of each department. Managing Directors told striking stories about their successes, and gave advice on how to pursue a career within an Investment bank. In small groups we assisted to workshops and cases related to previous deals where the banks held a role as advisor. The unofficial programme was at least as interesting. The afternoon visit would usually be followed with drinks, eventually dinner, and if lucky, bankers would take us to one of the fancy South Kensington club’s to pursue the unofficial recruitment event. This would allow us to speak on a more informal way to bankers and collect business cards.

The week was intense, exciting, and definitely exhausting. Soon after coming back to Amsterdam, different banks called, asking whether I was interested to apply for a position (full time or intern). After a long series of interviews in London and Amsterdam, I am now an intern at Deutsche Bank in the Corporate Finance Benelux coverage team in Amsterdam, and this summer I will do an internship at Morgan Stanley in London. Working as an intern for an Investment Bank is the challenging experience I was looking for. The steep learning curve and the increasing amount of responsibility that is given to me make the internship even more rewarding than expected. As an intern you are part of the team and you participate actively to the daily activities of an analyst. If you are interested in joining the investment banking world, the LBT is the perfect opportunity to discover the differences between the banks, the people, and the activities of each departments. More important, it gives you a real image on what precisely investment banking is, and if suited, it will give you the contacts that you need in order to get an internship.

Marc Vonk
Participant London Banking Tour 2008

The London Banking Tour proved to be an invaluable experience for me. I was propelled from a physics student who was uncertain about his future career (strategy consultancy, finance, academia?) to a true banking enthusiast. This summer I will do an internship at UBS in London.

It is unnecessary to say that the investment banking industry is not a hot topic in physics laboratories. For myself I knew that there were some guys in London earning a lot of money, but I had only a slight idea about how they did it. Banking only came to my attention seriously when I talked to a fellow student who had done an internship at a securities firm. At that time he also mentioned the LBT to me, as some kind of I-banking recruitment heaven. It wasn’t until a year later that I applied for the LBT, after hearing cool stories from a friend of mine who did an Investment Banking internship in Amsterdam.

So how did I manage to secure a place in the LBT when so many hungry economics and business students had applied as well? I think the key thing was a solid preparation for the application process. Browsing the Internet, watching CNBC and reading the economics section of your paper. The nice thing was that during the preparation I already grew more enthusiastic. When I got the offer to join the LBT 2008 the excitement was even greater.

The week itself was an absolute revelation for me. Imagine a world in which the financial world seemed to collapse and in which it was uncertain whether banks would be able to escape default. I was trapped in that world with 23 finance freaks at the place where it all happened. Every minute of the day there were new news facts that needed explanation. And there were enough Managing Directors of the biggest investment banks willing to explain. Also the discussion between participants was very interesting and inspiring. I have seldom seen a collection of such good people.

We visited a bank every day of the week (that is, except for Wednesday as Lehman Brothers had unfortunately defaulted) and often two banks a day. Every bank had a programme that provided us with an opportunity to get to know more about the bank, the people that worked there and the work itself. For example, we attended M&A workshops, trading games and ‘meet & greet’ lunches.

That is as far as the ‘official’ programme went. However, the ‘unofficial’ programme may have been just as important. The afternoon visit to a bank was always concluded with a drinks reception that could last until midnight. This was always a good opportunity to talk to bankers into a little more detail, laugh about their cowboy stories and collect their business cards. Afterwards the London nightlife provided us with ample opportunity to relax a little after the intense day. Thanks to the bankers who put us onto the guest lists we got to visit some amazing clubs. With corresponding prices, in Groningen I would never buy a bottle of beer for the ten pounds they charged in some London clubs. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Liam Tjong-a-Tjoe
Participant London Banking Tour 2007

Doing an internship in Corporate Finance in Amsterdam confirmed that Investment Banking should be the field that I should start my career in. I also realized that I would prefer working for a large, internationally oriented firm with a high profiled M&A department. I knew that the applications for the London Banking Tour were coming up and though I applied immediately I remained skeptical, as it is widely known that the number of applications far exceeds the available spots. Imagine my delight when I heard that I would be one of the 24 lucky students.

A few months later we set of for London, visiting 10 banks in 8 days, not only to see the M&A departments but also all the other teams and trading floors. Through the different tours and workshops it became clear that the work was pretty similar for most banks but that the types of people working at the different banks was indeed varying. It was surprising to see that the different LBT participants had different preferences for banks. The overlapping element was that all banks were very hospitable during our visit to their offices, some giving us tours of the immensely huge buildings. I also found that at most banks no question was off limits. During the week we did a number of valuation and M&A exercises based on real life deals that the banks had worked on. These were usually concluded with a Q&A in which a banker gave us insight in the specifics on how the deal came about. We also toured a number of trading floors where the traders explained in detail how a trade is executed and what all the information on the 6 PC screens in front of them means. The trading games were the part where active physical participation came in with everyone screaming and crawling over each other trying buy low and sell high.

Obviously we spent the evenings partying. Usually the official program ended with drinks hosted by a bank where after most of us set out to the center of London to grab some additional pints. As it proved difficult to get a group of 24 into the hottest clubs, we usually split up only to meet back in the early hours to get a couple of hours of sleep before the next day’s busy program.

After a long week we got back home with the first phone calls coming in as early as the next day. Luckily my participation proved to be successful. I’m currently finishing my MSc Financial Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and will be starting at Lazard in May.

Samantha Flores
Participant London Banking Tour 2006

I always knew that I wanted to work at an investment bank and thought that by participating in the London Banking Tour I would get the opportunity to explore the different cultures of the banks and come into direct contact with recruiters. Even though I had high expectations of the trip, I could never have imagined what was in store for me.

In six days we visited eleven investment banks, toured four trading floors, partied at London’s hottest clubs, drank way too much champagne, slept very little, but collected many business cards! It was amazing to see how much the banks differed in culture. Although all had the same work ethic: work hard, play hard, the differences were very noticeable. At the end of the week everyone had their preferences and was eager to go home to start applying to their favourite investment banks.

I was one of them, after seeing the city life up close and experiencing the lives and exciting work of the investment bankers I was certain that this was what I wanted to do. So, I started applying to my favourite investment banks. Within two weeks I had my first round of interviews with Merrill Lynch and a week after that I was given a job offer! I hadn’t been back a month and I already had a job offer in the pocket! Although I knew that roughly 75% of the LBT participants receive a job offer, I never thought it would take me only three weeks to be included in that statistic!

I had a great time on the trip, made many new friends and on top of that also got the job that at first I could only dream of…… What’s next? 6-week training in New York City!