Not so long ago Chinese investments banks didn’t recruit many interns and those they did take on weren’t a match for the summer analysts at their Western counterparts.
Times have changed, especially at CICC, the so-called Goldman Sachs of China, which ranked second for ex-Japan APAC core investment banking fees in the first quarter of 2017, according to Dealogic.
Some of the firm’s interns have updated their online public profiles to reveal academic and work backgrounds similar to those of interns at global banks. If you want to intern at CICC in Hong Kong or China, here’s who you have to live up to
Zijia Liu
Liu is a summer analyst in the FICC structured products team at CICC in Beijing, according to her online profile. She’s also a finance and maths student at Peking University (a favoured hunting ground for investment banks) where she has so far received three scholarship. Liu’s interest in banking only began three years into her degree, when she took part in introductory student programmes at Morgan Stanley and Deustche Bank, winning a case competition at the latter firm. Internships followed at Founder Securities and Tulip Capital Management, where she helped optimise quantitative equity trading strategies. And…Liu is a quantitative research assistant at her university’s Guanghua School of Management.
Cassie Zhang
CICC private equity intern Zhang is part of a perpetually in-demand talent pool: Chinese students studying overseas. She’s doing a degree in economics and philosophy at Boston University and has thrown herself into the type of extracurricular activities that banks adore. She’s the BU student government director of finance, the director of corporate relations for the financial modeling club, and a committee member for socially responsible investing. Encouragingly for potential future mainland employers, Zhang returns to China to clock up internships during her vacations. Aside from CICC, she’s also worked for China Minsheng, Guoyuan Securities, and China Aerospace Investment, her profile states.
Peihong Duan
Duan’s CICC job is in the equity research team in Hong Jong and it follows a stint last summer at McKinsey & Co. But it’s away from internships that her CV stand out. Not content with advancing her own education (she’s studying economic and finance at HKU), Duan founded Wisdom Park Training Group in 2015, which runs training programmes for school students and has helped some of them secure offers from top Hong Kong universities. She’s also currently the student ambassador for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and the director of business development for her university’s business consulting club, according to her online profile.
Shaoyue Wang
As one of China’s elite investment banks, CICC typically takes on students who’ve already established a good internship track record elsewhere. Wang is a case in point – before joining CICC this summer he worked for five firms, starting with Parthenon-EY and KPMG. He’s since focused on investment banking – first at Guotai Junan Securities (where he advised a leading automotive parts company on an RMB600m IPO) and then at Somerley Capital Holdings and GF Securities, according to the profile he’s posted online.
Xinyi Yang
Yang demonstrates that your track record doesn’t need to be in banking and that CICC can actually be imaginative in its choice of inters. While Yang is studying economics at Perking University and he does boast a high grade point average, he is also (jointly) studying sports management and this is his first banking internship since starting college in 2014. Last year Yang was a part-time finance assistant at tech giant Tencent and he’s worked for Bain & Company and Siemens too, according to his public profile. Yang is an actor in his spare time and recently played the main role in a student musical production of Cyrano de Bergerac
Xingrui Xiang
Can you intern twice at CICC, if you perform well enough first time round? Xiang’s profile suggests so. Last winter he was an equity research intern at the firm; now he’s come back to work in its investment banking division in Shenzhen. Like many CICC summer analysts, Xiang has a consultancy internship under his belt – he worked part-time at Boston Consulting Group between March and May this year. During his finance degree at Lingnan University, Xiang has also done stints at CITIC Securities, Guosen Securities, and IDG Capital, according to his profile.
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