IIM-A grads turn financial sector's favourites

Students at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have emerged favorites for the financial services sector in 2004.

At Summers-2004, the annual placement event of the institute, 40 per cent of the batch was placed in the financial services sector. Sixteen per cent was recruited by investment banks abroad, which is higher than all other B-schools in India combined.

Also, many new companies such as Barclays and American Express Financial Advisors recruited interns from IIM-A for the first time.

"Banks offering overseas internships increased to 10 from 9 in 2003. Some international banks such as Morgan Stanley recruit only from this institute. Other day-zero banks are Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

Indian offers kept pace with the rise in that from abroad due to increased hiring and addition of new recruiters. Bank of America, Citibank, ICICI, IFC and Standard Chartered are some of the companies that continued their association with the institute," said Shashank Khare, placement incharge, IIM-A.

One of the sectors which witnessed a rise in offers was insurance, a consequence of the booming Indian insurance sector. ICICI Prudential was the largest recruiter in the banking and financial services sector.

ICICI Lombard and ING Vysya Life Insurance recruited for the first time from the institute. The institute conducted the summer recruitment process over two weekends "" November 19 - 21 and November 26 - 27.

A total of 250 students of the batch of 2004 were placed in 80 companies. The number of day-zero internships increased by 33 per cent to 48 in 2004. Day-zero offers at 78 were almost double of last year.

There was a 10 per cent rise in companies recruiting on this day. Aggressive recruiting was also seen on day-one where the number of offers increased by 55 per cent and acceptances rose by 27 per cent. The remaining students were placed on day-one slot-two.

Internships were offered in all sectors "" reflecting the allround strength of the institute's curriculum.

The three top recruiters were IBM with 12 acceptances, Hindustan Lever 10 and Lehman Brothers 10 "" each of them being from different sectors.

"The focus is gradually shifting to India as the quality and quantity of jobs on offer increases. Some students only look at Indian jobs and have decided to come back after being abroad to study and work in India. This trend is expected to gain momentum with the growth of the Indian economy," said Khare.