Merrill Lynch Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

Pub & drink culture after work, good pay, possibility to make overtime. Easy job for the money, but nothing special.

Cons

It seems that people work in investment banking without knowing what they doing there, as everyone does just a small bit of the large process. That was a bit disappointing.

Pros

- They let you manage your own work if you show them you know what your doing, and you're successful in tasks assigned to you, even if you are at a junior level
- Faster promotions are possible depending on how successful you are
- No completely separated cubicles! You all sit next to each other, very easy to communicate and share, extremely useful.

Cons

- After the credit crunch hit the firm, they started cutting costs, even those you need to do your job properly. Ex: at some point, they did not let analysts and associates travel unless it was really really really necessary. This meant analysts and associates do not get to learn as much.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more open to your employees. If there is something wrong at the company, communicate it to your employees yourselves rather than letting rumor get the best of everyone and disrupt work.

Pros

Good team atmosphere - young and enthusiastic, always up for drinks, fun runs etc. Excited about the potential to improve the business with new technology.
Good training website "Merrill Lynch University" even if external courses were hard to get funded.
Matched giving to charity - you can easily fundraise with a whipround the office.

Cons

Technology department seen as a backwater by front office staff.
Pressure to outsource roles to Asia.
Budget cuts after large losses in the business that we had no control over.
Hours spent on voice-conference with Americans late in the afternoon. Many of whom you'd never met and who rarely listened to opinions from outside their world.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest about losses in the business and likely changes that will affect staff.

Pros

* Good compensation
* Friendly fellow team members

Cons

* Unprofessional management - very serious issues were not dealt with properly
* Terrible systems
* Promotions driven by cliques / politics rather than on genuine merit
* Dire work-life balance

Advice to Senior Management

You need to take better care of your people - developing them and just generally making them feel like valued people rather than machines.

* Put more value on promoting people who have good people skills (not just those who do a good job on the line or those who are chummy with the right people).
* More focus on work life balance

Pros

Top brokerage firm in the world - real equity culture
Some very seasoned individuals
Fair compensation but you have to fight for it
Promotion can achieved quickly for high achievers, meritorcratic overall

Cons

compensation in research can be poor versus rest of organisation
weak, poor IT systems
Decent senior management but middle management may not be effective decision makers
getting increasingly bureaucratic

Advice to Senior Management

Need to be more decisive at times when dealing with people - need to manage expectations better

Pros

The people are generally quite nice and the company has a good reputation. The facilities are also quie nice compared to many other companies.

Cons

There is a real problem with poor communication and an unclear division of responsibilties between divisions. The technology is also quite old and many systems are cobbled together in a poor way.

Advice to Senior Management

There seems to be a lack of strategic vision and many employees are frustrated at the lack of a common focus between divisions.

Pros

- High level client projects
- Intelligent colleagues
- International exposure
- Leader in many aspects of Investment Banking
- Excellent facilities

Cons

- Work / Life Balance
- Low pay compared to peers
- No internal mobility
- Lack of client contact at junior levels

Advice to Senior Management

- More transparency when it comes to bonus and reviews
- Greater flexibility on work / life balance as allows
- Greater focus on training and internal mobility to retain talented junior staff

Pros

I worked in global markets as a summer Intern. Overall it was a good grad program allowing me to rotate between different desks. A lot of effort was made to educate about the various other parts of the bank and it was easy to go and chat to people and spend time finding out about what the individual desks did day to day. A great learning experience overall which demystified many aspects of the equity trading floor.

Cons

As an intern you cannot go in with specific career plans. They will place you where they want you and this can mean an offer in FICC when you spent your summer in Equities,

Advice to Senior Management

A good intern program. Little advice to give,

Pros

Large firm (if this is a good thing for you as an individual), nice offices, salary, if you are happy to forego your social life and put work ahead of evrything else in your life so that you get a good - this is the place

Cons

The place is one of those where if your face fits then it will be okay. The hours they expect from you are crazy, unless you are happy with minumum 12 hour days for no thanks at all from management. In fact just the threat that then it may not be you who is made redundant. This is also very much a blame culture as people are scared about their future employment. Have worked inmuch friendlier banks.

Advice to Senior Management

Let staff know that you appreciate their hard work. Do not threaten staff by saying that if they do not work hard or that if anything is missed they will loose their jobs, this is not how you motivate staff and keep them happy

Pros

I was provided with opportunities to contribute and feel like a part of the team (even only as an intern) and any subsequent successes. Doing an internship there you really feel like you have a chance to impress management as well as discover what working for the company is like. Perhaps the best reason to work for Merrill Lynch is the chance in an exciting, fast paced environment coupled with Merrill Lynch's organisational culture. It was evident about a week into working for the company that most people were really friendly and very helpful (which significantly helps your networking abilities) and that for me was the most impressive element.

Cons

In Merrills sometimes the jobs have less structure than they should do which can lead to problems in terms of project management and other areas. It leads to teams not talking to eachother properly and (much the same in many other companies) communication breakdowns and misunderstandings are the direct root cause of this. They also perhaps do not give you as much preparatory information as you need in order to hit the ground running before you arrive, that is perhaps to be expected but there is definitely some scope for improvement. There is also a very steep learning curve that might be avoided if they prepare for your arrival in a more efficient manner.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your employees to perform their duties and don't micro-manage