Summer Analyst Review

I enjoyed the internship as the BofA Merrill Lynch organises several social events for summer interns and has an outstanding, very supportive company culture. Furthermore, you take on challenging tasks that are critical to the success of the project during your internship, which I really appreciated.

The company culture at BofA Merrill Lynch is very supportive and everybody is happy to explain something new to you. Moreover, people enjoy hanging out together outside of work and love doing sports with their colleagues on the weekends, which underlines the fact that people value each other within the company.

At BofA Merrill Lynch, every intern has got a mentor, a development officer and a buddy with whom he catches up from time to time. The mentor is a senior banker that gives general tips regarding the internship to the intern, while the development officer is responsible for your reviews and gives guidance for which teams to work with. The buddy is a junior that you keep in touch closely with as he can help you with nearly everything.

Generally, I was busy during the days but were always able to head out of the office on time. However, as the business is very short-sighted and clients / seniors need some time to review your work, it sometimes was the case that one had no urgent task for up to 2 hours which is totally fine for working on a long-term project, having a quick coffee or reading the news.

Naturally, the responsibility that you receive as an intern in an investment bank is not comparable to the responsibilities in a start-up, etc. However, I was relatively surprised by how much responsibilities the Analysts and Associates hand over to the interns during some projects. For example, I was nearly responsibly for setting up the merger model for a pitch on my own, which later got audited by the Analyst and the Associate on the project.

The main skills that you learn during the internship are work efficiency and diligence from my perspective. Both are skills that are really useful in life. Added to that, BofA Merrill Lynch has a training week in which the interns learn a lot of technical stuff. There are also weekly learning sessions on different topics each week, which are helpful to broaden your view.

The overall atmosphere in the offices of BofA Merrill Lynch is very supportive and open-minded. Everybody is happy to meet the interns and not just give them some guidance for their internship but also explain things to them. Additionally, everybody valued each other within the firm.

The BofA Merrill Lynch Summer Analyst programme is set up perfectly with one week of training and nine weeks on the desk. Furthermore, in Investment Banking, interns do not choose their team before the internship but have the ability to work with every team they want throughout the internship.

BofA Merrill Lynch provides the interns with a week-long training with experts from Hongkong and New Zealand, has senior networking events, has weekly learning session with seniors presenting some topics to the interns and an online training portal. That clearly shows their commitment to train the interns.

Future employment prospects within the organisation are extraordinary good as they fill most of their full time positions through interns which leads to the fact that approx. 75% of the interns tend to receive an offer at the internship.

The fellow interns often had lunch and dinner together but also meet up on the weekends. All in all, I would say that nearly everybody got along well with the other interns and hence we had a lot of fun as a group.

The costs in London are very high for students, especially in the City of London. Nevertheless, the salary is competitive so that you are well able to have a good lifestyle throughout the internship.

The City of London is not an area where people go out during the night. However, there are several pubs / bars, where people enjoy having one or two drinks after work.

At BofA Merrill Lynch, there are several sports clubs and networks that you can get involved in outside of work. Furthermore, you can just do something with some colleagues on the weekend. I played football every Sunday with some of the colleagues sitting next to me.