Apollo Delays Young Banker Offers as Rowan Agrees With Dimon | Company Business News

(Bloomberg) — Apollo Global Management told prospective investment-banking candidates that it won’t interview or extend offers to the class of 2027 this year, following a backlash from banks over young recruits accepting future-dated offers.

In a letter sent to candidates on Wednesday, Apollo explained its decision by saying it believes graduates should take time early in their careers and deepen their understanding of business. Apollo’s Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan said he agreed with recent criticisms that the process for hiring young recruits had started too early. 

“Hiring decisions at Apollo are among the most significant to our business,” David Sambur, co-head of private equity and Nicole Bonsignore, head of human capital, wrote in the letter seen by Bloomberg. “With that in mind, we will not formally interview and extend offers this year for the class of 2027.”

Tensions over private equity firms recruiting junior investment bankers have simmered for more than a decade. Banks have sought to strike a balance between taking steps to avoid losing talented young employees while not angering those workers or the buyout firms that are often among their biggest clients.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon last year said in a talk at Georgetown University that he didn’t like the practice of junior bankers agreeing to their second job at a private equity firm before starting their first role at a bank.

“It puts us in a bad position, and it puts us in a conflicted position,” Dimon said then. “You are already working for somewhere else, and you’re dealing with highly confidential information from JPMorgan, and I just don’t like it.”

JPMorgan this month told incoming graduates that they’ll be fired if they accept future job offers at other firms either before starting at the bank or within their first 18 months, according to a letter seen by Bloomberg. 

“When someone says something that is just plainly true, I feel compelled to agree with it,” Rowan said in an emailed statement. “Bank CEOs, along with others, have said what many of us have been thinking: Recruiting has crept earlier and earlier every year, and asking students to make career decisions before they truly understand their options doesn’t serve them or our industry.”

The race to grab fresh talent from Wall Street reached a boiling point in recent years. Private equity firms looking to hire for their 2024 associate classes were forced to do a second round of recruiting in 2023 after initial efforts fell short. Eager to beat competitors, many buyout shops had started reaching out to banks’ first-year trainees just a few weeks after they began work in 2022. 

But tensions had emerged long before then. Back in 2013, Morgan Stanley abandoned an attempt to block first-year bankers from talking with recruiters for outside firms after employees complained, Bloomberg reported at the time. 

“When great candidates make rushed decisions it creates avoidable turnover—and that serves no one,” Rowan said.

The decision is expected to impact candidates looking at careers in private equity, hybrid capital and financials. 

–With assistance from Hannah Levitt.

(Updates with additional background throughout.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com