Wall Street Woes Don’t Deter Seniors

This fall, as Boris R. T. Van ’08 considered his post-graduation employment plans, Citigroup—where Van had worked this summer and had an offer to return—was in the process of ousting its CEO and announcing at least $8 billion in writedowns, part of the fallout of this summer’s credit meltdown.

But Van says that despite a media blitz that chronicled the firm’s every move into what appeared to be dangerous waters, the public relations disaster never played a role in his decision.

“I wanted to take a longer-term view,” he says. “When you make a career move, you need to ignore the noise of the media and the student body.”

He accepted his offer at Citigroup.

Van is one of many seniors on campus this fall who have been forced to weigh full-time job offers from Wall Street firms that have been the target of public scrutiny and blamed for a now uncertain economy because of their role in the subprime mortgage markets.

In addition, several of the most desirable employers have been tied to other public relations fiascos—such as Swiss investment bank UBS’ role in raising funding for PetroChina or Google and Yahoo!’s cooperation with the Chinese government’s investigation of political dissidents.

But seniors, officials at the Office of Career Services (OCS), and recruiters contacted by The Crimson say that the recent publicity surrounding such firms hasn’t affected Harvard students’ willingness to work there.

“Student outrage is important but selective and trendy,” says Sanford Kreisberg, an independent consultant who runs the widely-read business school admissions blog HBSGURU.com. “[Paychecks and name brands] are externalities that don’t go into issues of morality.”

PETROCHINA AND US

Few have experienced more campus backlash than investment bank UBS for the firm’s role as the lead underwriter for the Shanghai listing of PetroChina, a subsidiary of the state-run China National Petroleum Company (CNPC). CNPC is a business partner of the Sudanese government.

UBS has defended itself by arguing that PetroChina itself has no operations in Sudan.

Still, members of the Harvard Darfur Action Group (HDAG) have been present at several UBS recruiting events this fall, including one in mid-November, handing out fliers detailing the alleged relationship between UBS and PetroChina. The first e-recruiting deadline for students applying for summer internships is today.

“I think that students don’t go into these events with full awareness of business practices of these companies,” says Trevor J. Bakker ’10, the political advocacy chair for HDAG. “When there’s no consideration among students for what these firms do, then there’s a problem.”

Bakker, who admits that for him, working in the financial sector is “a possibility among many,” says that he would consider the morality of a firm’s actions when choosing an employer.

“I think that the ethical aspect of a corporation’s business practice would have to play a role for me,” he says. “I would feel very morally conflicted working for a company that had practices that I didn’t believe in, even if I wasn’t involved in it.”

But OCS Director William Wright-Swadel says that he doesn’t think that the negative publicity has changed the minds of many job-seekers on campus.

“I have not had groups of students come to me [about UBS], nor have I had students come to me about companies recently,” he says.

“Does what UBS is doing affect students here?” Wright-Swadel continues. “Yes, for some students. For others, it is a piece of a puzzle. They have to reconcile the notion that they have to be involved in that field in order to make a change.”

UBS spokesman Doug Morris also says that this fall’s negative publicity has had minimal effect on recruiting, though he notes that at one of the recruiting events at Harvard this past fall, a student in attendance did ask about UBS’ role in underwriting PetroChina.

“We don’t believe that any of this negative publicity has had any significant impact on our recruiting,” he says. “We’ve had a very successful recruiting year, and our events at Harvard were very well attended.”

Kreisberg points out that other popular employers, such as Google and Yahoo!, have similarly not been affected by alleged unethical business practices.

“Yahoo! has just apologized for giving the Chinese police the names of dissident bloggers, and Google and Microsoft have been accused of the same collusion, but students still favor those companies because they are hip,” he says.

SUBPRIME PUBLICITY

The major banks have also received negative attention as a result of this summer’s subprime crisis, an embarrassing stretch for Wall Street firms in which billions of dollars in writedowns were announced and thousands of employees were laid off.

But students say that the media blitz did not alter their opinions of the major banks during their job hunt.

“[Merrill Lynch CEO] Stan O’Neal’s exit doesn’t factor into my decision because it won’t change anything in my investment banking group and even less about my potential analyst experience,” says Jane Fang ’08, who will be working at Merrill next year. “Sure his departure has generated bad press and I’d prefer if that wasn’t the case but it’s the nature of the business and UBS, Citigroup, etc. were all hit hard.”

David A. Lorch ’08, who will also be working at Merrill, adds that the firm “is very well prepared to go it alone and continue to be one of the most successful firms on Wall Street.”

AN AGE-OLD PROBLEM

Wright-Swadel, the OCS director, says that throughout his time as a career adviser students have factored company reputations into their employment decisions.

“In the 60s and 70s, companies like Dow Chemical were an issue for students because of their involvement with making napalm in Vietnam,” he says. And “major petroleum companies like Exxon have their environmental problems, like the Valdez incident,” he adds, referring to a massive oil spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989.

But moral concerns are often short-lived.

“I would have conversations with engineering students who said they would never work with [Exxon]—yet that changes two years later,” Wright-Swadel says.

Kraisberg says that looking at a student’s socioeconomic background could be one way to explain how much company actions will affect his or her decision.

“One important thing to note is that [upper-class] students tend to have these concerns while working class students don’t,” he says. “These students come from wealthy financial backgrounds and have many opportunities as a result.”

Adds Wright-Swadel, “Students that I talk to—and this is not unique to Harvard—often face a conflict between the things that they believe in and the things that they want.”

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