Lehman Seniors Left in Limbo

The recent market turmoil has directly affected the career paths of Harvard undergraduates who spent their summers interning at many of the global financial firms whose balance sheets have deteriorated in the last few weeks.

A number of these students, who interned at investment banks such as Lehman Brothers, have seen their full-time offers enter a state of limbo.

The Lehman offers extended to seniors who interned last summer are still under deliberation, according to Matthew P. Bresnahan ’09 who interned in Lehman’s Global Consumer/Retail Group. Bresnahan received an offer for full-time employment at the end of his internship.

“As of this time, Lehman has not rescinded our offers and has been in close contact with us,” Bresnahan said. “We have been told that Barclays, or whoever ends up acquiring Lehman’s U.S. investment banking operations, may end up honoring the original offers.”

Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy last week, followed by the purchase of Lehman’s North American operations by Barclays, Britain’s third largest bank.

Bresnahan said he had been attracted to the 158-year-old investment bank by its aggressive recruiting process.

“Lehman had events every week, ranging from panel discussions to info sessions to resume workshops,” Bresnahan said. “Lehman made it clear that they wanted Harvard students to work at their firm.”

Vikas V. Mouli ’09, who interned in the investment bank’s Global Power Group over the summer, agreed with Bresnahan.

“There were plenty of opportunities to interact with people from Lehman,” Mouli said about the recruitment process. “They always had many Harvard alums, whose area of expertise ranged from investment management to sales and trading, come to their events.”

During the summer internship, Bresnahan said there was “a lot of optimism.”

“A lot of employees thought that the hedge funds shorting Lehman were spreading negative sentiment about us,” he said. “That was particularly frustrating because our group knew we were doing well even though there was pessimism outside of Lehman.”

Mouli noted that during his internship, many of his colleagues had been positive about Lehman’s future.

“The group I worked in was consistently one of the top groups in the Street,” Mouli said. “These were good guys who knew their stuff well and deserved to be in business competing against other banks.”

While both Bresnahan and Mouli received full-time offers, Lehman’s future remains uncertain.

“We’re going to keep talking with Lehman to see how things work out, although Lehman has advised us to keep our options open and keep talking to other firms as well,” Bresnahan said.

—Staff writer Prateek Kumar can be reached at kumar@fas.harvard.edu.