I’ve heard rumblings in online articles that banks are heavily shifting to associate promotions after two years as an analyst, largely to promote retention. As far as I know, I’ve only seen this at GS, maybe MS if I’m not mistaken. What firms are making two years the norm?
Pretty much everywhere. If you start in July 2018, then you would become an associate around July 2020. GS has set the norm and all the banks are following, this has been going for a while
Yea this feels like it's trending. A lot of others firms are following suit. Wells Fargo, Lazard, etc. are all giving 2 year or 2.5 year promotions to get good analysts to stay. Essentially the tech and start-up community is snatching all the analysts that are not getting snatched by buyside folks. I'd be surprised if this is now not the norm across all major banks. This trend probably started 5-6 years ago.
While two year programs have become the norm, practically, I haven’t seen much of a change these past few years, at least at bulge brackets (can’t speak for boutiques). Analysts generally see the buyside as a better long-term career, so they seek it out. As a result, the top analysts get roles in PE or at a hedge fund. Those who end up as an A2A are either individuals who genuinely like banking (rare) or those who haven’t yet found that next step, often times because they struck out. I find this a somewhat troubling trend, as this results in less than stellar analysts becoming associates.
2.5 years or strange elongated Associate tenures seem to be more common. All banks have early promotion for top performers: Credit Suisse, Lazard, Bank of America, RBC, DB etc and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it here at Barclays.
Oh no are they counterbalancing it with an extension of associate? Haven’t heard of that outside of the A0 stub that can applied to A2A promotes alongside the MBAs. Figured it was there for top performers