Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to pay interns to quarantine in hotels
Budding bankers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan forced to quarantine in hotels before they can begin their City careers will have their costs covered by the banks.
The Wall Street titans are among the major lenders preparing to welcome another intake of new starters in the middle of the pandemic.
But many of the graduates will be moving to London from around the world at a time of strict travel restrictions.
Both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are preparing to welcome interns to their London offices from 21 June regardless of whether lockdown easing goes ahead as planned, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The new starters will be encouraged to come into the office unless Covid rules get much stricter and both are footing hotel bills for those flying in from red list countries and forced to quarantine.
“A huge number of interns join from abroad which has made the process very complicated this year,” one insider told the newspaper.
The approach differs to British banks such as Barclays, which is running its internships virtually for the second year in a row.
HSBC’s UK programmes will also be remote, while Deutsche Bank plans to have graduates in the office depending on which division they work with.
Lloyds, which scrapped its summer internship programme altogether last year, is restarting its programme virtually this year.
Banks have been forced to overhaul their graduate programmes since the start of the pandemic by moving them online and making them shorter.
The schemes are notoriously competitive, while Wall Street banks have come under scrutiny in recent months amid accusations of “inhuman” workplace practices.