Lazard

Lazard's UK early-career programmes cover four London entry points within Financial Advisory:

• Spring Insight Programme – one afternoon, open to first-year undergraduates
• Summer Internship – 10 weeks, running from late June to early September, for penultimate-year undergraduates
• Industrial Placement – 12 months, for third-year students on four-year degrees
• Analyst Programme – permanent graduate role, preceded by a six-week European Analyst Training Programme held in London

A US Summer Analyst Program runs out of New York across Financial Advisory divisions (Generalist M&A, Restructuring & Capital Solutions, Capital Markets Advisory, Private Capital Advisory, Corporate Finance Advisory), and continental European offices in Paris, Milan, Copenhagen, and Frankfurt run their own M&A internships and analyst classes with staggered start months – July, September/October, and January intakes are all currently posted. A candidate choosing Lazard is choosing not between rotations but between geographies and divisions: the application route is per-office, and the experience is anchored to that office and team rather than a firm-wide rotation.

The firm reviews on a rolling basis and may close a programme's window early if positions fill before the published deadline. For a candidate applying across multiple banks in the autumn cycle, that means submitting earlier in a window matters in absolute terms – places can go before the deadline arrives – and the four stages will run concurrently with first-round timings at other firms.

Candidates remain responsible for understanding UK eligibility requirements themselves. The firm does not publish an equivalent statement for its US, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, or other continental European programmes, so a candidate aiming at those offices should treat sponsorship as an office-by-office question rather than a firm-wide policy – and where firm pages are silent, the safer assumption when planning applications is that right-to-work in the local market may be expected.

It has no balance sheet – no trading desk, no lending arm – and operates as a pure adviser, with Financial Advisory (M&A, capital markets, restructuring) and Asset and Wealth Management as the two core businesses. Its Restructuring & Capital Solutions practice is unusually large for a firm of its size and is consistently among the most active globally in distressed and complex situations. For an early-career applicant, this shape means the work is client-facing advisory from day one rather than rotated across markets or trading desks, and the office choice (New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan) carries real weight because each office runs its own deal flow and team.