Morning Coffee: Something wild happened to applications to work at Citi. Private equity guy continues to annoy holiday enclave

Some truths about internships in investment banks turn out to be wrong. It is not true, for example, that banks hired far fewer interns this year than in past. Nor is it true that having stocked up on interns, they decided not to offer them full time analyst jobs at the end of the summer. 

Financial News has unearthed some information about banks' appetite for students in 2026. At JPMorgan, it says 85% of summer analysts in the UK received offers to return full time this year, which sounds pleasantly high. And at Goldman Sachs, it says there were 2,500 interns, down only slightly on the 2,600 interns at Goldman in 2025 and 2024. 

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One thing does seem to be true though. Equipped with the powers of agentic AI, graduates are making wild quantities of applications. Weirdly, though, they seem to be using their powers mostly to apply for internships at Citi.

While Financial News says applications to JPMorgan were up only 10% last year and that applications to Goldman Sachs were 250,000 (implying an unlikely fall of 30% on Goldman applications in 2025), it says applications to Citi's EMEA summer analyst and associate roles rose more than four times to 52,000 in a single year. 

What is occurring? We haven't validated the numbers with any of the banks concerned, so maybe they're off? Maybe people just really, really want to work for Citi? Maybe LLMs and agentic AIs just really, really want to work for Citi? Maybe people are using agentic AIs to automate their Citi applications but are making tailored applications to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan?

We don't know. But it seems peculiar. Both techniques of applying for graduate jobs have their failings. Last week, we spoke to a student who said he was planning to make 500 AI -fuelled applications but that he kept being ghosted by employers. This week, we spoke to a student "targeting specific opportunities." Was that working for him? "Not really," he admitted. 

Separately, Marc Rowan, the bookish Apollo CEO, who describes himself as a "lion tamer" managing type A personalities and who himself has a huge net worth of $11bn, continues to upset people at Montauk in the Hamptons. 

Rowan runs a controversial "seafood shack" in Montauk called Duryea's which he bought in 2014. The shack has been in existence since 1920 and was once a rustic bait shop. Rowan would like prefer the rustic bait shop. Rowan has reined-in his ambitions, but not completely. Duryea's is a bit like a chichi restaurant with distressed wooden tables and cushions, it's just that it can't offer table service. Rowan hasn't created a ferry port there, but there do seem to be large boats moored nearby. And streams of "preppy" clientele are constantly arriving in large black SUVs. 

The locals, who monitor what Rowan is up to at Duryea's, now seem to have some ammunition against him. In 2019, Rowan reached an agreement with a Montauk town lawyer that Duryea's could be classified as a restaurant, but the WSJ says the town board never voted on this and a judge agrees. 

It's not clear what happens next. Rowan is deemed "technically nice" but is also the local scapegoat. "He's the hedge fund guy who bought the mom and pop shop," says one neighbour. Rowan works in private equity, but this doesn't matter to the semi-type B personalities of Long Island, many of whom also seem to live in NYC and who want rustic weekends.

Meanwhile...

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently sent subpoenas to banks that handled the calamitous trading of Situational Awareness and that provided the fund with leverage. Situational Awareness said it will "cooperate to the fullest extent." (NYTimes) 

Andrii Zagorulko joined Millennium as a portfolio manager in London, covering the mining and energy sectors. (GlobalTrading) 

Private equity firms that can't exit investments via a sale or IPO have found a new thing. It's called structured equity trades and typically involves preferred stock with no maturity date and fixed, high dividends that must be paid before common stockholders. Backers are usually repaid when a company is sold or floated. (Bloomberg) 

Shein is trying to raise $2bn in a much reduced IPO and UBS is a cornerstone investor. Forget the ethical concerns. (Bloomberg) 

Historically, Kevin Warsh seems to have had an unconventional view of unemployment, believing it to be structural rather than temporary, meaning it's not slack, and it won’t discipline prices. (WSJ) 

Now Trump wants to add a $103,265 fee on the H-1B program, and would apply it to individuals hired within the US, including those with Master's degrees. A court previously banned him from applying a similar charge to applicants outside the country. (Bloomberg) 

Goldman Sachs has been adding front office staff in Paris, Frankfurt and Milan and now has 150 more people in those offices than last year. (Financial News)  

Morgan Stanley interns like luxury handbags, Zara and the gym. Only 3% don't exercise at all. (Business Insider) 

The maker of Oura rings is going for an IPO. Bankers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Allen & Co. and Jefferies are working on the deal. It may be an issue if their Oura rings say they're getting too little sleep. (Bloomberg)  

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