London Business School (LBS) MBA graduates are seeing higher salaries and increased hiring rates, but their love of the finance industry seems to be waning.
According to the 2016 London Business School employment report, MBA grads are heading into the financial sector at the lowest rate in five years. Now, to be fair, one in every four LBS grads (25 percent) stills takes a job in finance, but that’s well behind the 35 percent of graduates who enter consulting. The technology industry hired the third-most LBS 2016 graduates at 21 percent—matching the the previous year.
Goldman Sachs, the finance firm that typically hires more LBS MBA grads than any other, took just six employees from the 2016 class, down from nine the previous year. Credit Suisse and Citi Bank also hired fewer grads than in the previous year. Summer internship hiring by financial firms, however, remains strong. Overall, 31 percent of the Class of 2018 interned in the financial sector, down just slightly from 32 percent the year before. Goldman Sachs, for its part, hired 13 summer interns.
Within the finance sector, growth on the buy side—in private equity, venture capital and investment management—has helped counter a decrease in opportunities in investment banking since the financial collapse of 2008. In fact, in 2016 more LBS grads (9 percent) joined private equity firms than investment banks (7 percent) for the first time ever.
Even as finance hiring overall has fallen, salaries within the industry have continued to climb. The average annual base salary for 2016 grads heading into finance was £81,905 ($108,143), up from £78,358 ($103,460) a year earlier. The highest reported base salary within the finance sector was £151,469 ($200,000), for a position in investment management.
Consulting Hires Grow
The total percentage of LBS graduates joining the consulting industry increased moderately from 33 percent in 2015 to 35 percent last year, with the majority of hires joining the big three firms—McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Bain & Company. At BCG in particular, hires nearly doubled, jumping from 19 in 2015 to 34 in 2016.
On average, starting salaries in consulting were higher than in any other industry and increased year over year. The average annual base salary in consulting grew from from £79,773 ($105,332) in 2015 to £83,268 ($109,942) last year, although the highest reported starting salary, £117,389 ($155,000), was off slightly from 2015’s high of £121,824 ($160,856).
Where internships are concerned, consulting is third choice for LBS students,1 drawing 22 percent of the class. Here, finance still leads, followed by tech, which drew 28 percent of the class each of the past three summers. But the percentage of students interning at consulting firms has been gradually increasing each of the past five years, up from just 16 percent in 2013.
The LBS MBA Class of 2017
LBS’s next batch of graduates, the Class of 2017, is made up of 411 students ranging from the age of 24 to 39. They entered the MBA program with an average of five years of professional work experience and a 701 GMAT score (up from the prior class’s 699). The percentage of female students in this class increased slightly from 36 to 37 percent. The number of total nationalities also rose, from 65 to 68.
You can read the entire LBS 2016 employment report here.
This post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, metromba.com.
