Dispelling rumours about reduced hiring due to the sub-prime crisis, investment banks were once again the most preferred recruiters at the Indian Institutes of Management.

At IIM Ahmedabad, 35.9 per cent of the students opted to take up their two-month internships with I-Banks, whereas 19 per cent of students took up the same at IIM Bangalore.

Along with the usual names, top investment banking firms, Macquaire and Rothschild, also made their way to IIM-A for the first time.

There were 11 investment banks in all at IIM-Ahmedabad and 16 at IIM-Bangalore. Major recruiters on Slot 0 (day one) for both the IIMs included investment banking giants like Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

IIM-Bangalore received around 90 investment bank offers of which 15-odd were for Indian positions. At IIM-Calcutta, around 100 companies turned up for summer placements and investment-banks were again the preferred recruiters.

"We were apprehensive about the summer placements this year on account of the sub-prime crisis but not only did our regular recruiters turn up, but we saw more investment banks coming to the IIMs for the first time, "said a placement co-ordinator at IIM Bangalore.

He added that the recruiters hadn't given an indication about final placements yet, but had spoken with the students and told them that they viewed the crisis as something that would eventually not be such a serious problem.

Similar views were echoed by a placement co-ordinator at IIM-Ahmedabad. "We have been told by the Investment banks that the sub-prime crisis isn't likely to affect summer and final placements since these organisations prefer division-based hiring. Under such a hiring method, if a certain division is hit by the crisis, that does not really affect other divisions of the bank," said Arjun Shetty, a placement co-ordinator at IIM-A.

Private equity firms were equally sought after with Blackstone PE, General Atlantic, Audax and Greater Pacific Capital visiting IIM-A for the first time.

Other new firms on IIM-A included financial service majors like AIG and ING. Consulting majors Arthur D Little and Value Partners recruited for summers for the first time.

At IIM-B too, the Blackstone Group recruited for the first time. Other PE firms flocking to campus included ChrysCapital, Greater Pacific Capital, Goldman Sachs PE, IDG Ventures, Temasek Holdings, etc.

In addition to these, asset management & portfolio management firms like Franklin Templeton, Lotus AMC, HSBC Securities & Roulac visited IIM-B.

IIM Kozhikode had its share of new recruiters too. This year there were 66 recruiters in all, where 22 were new recruiters. Google, Freudenberg, Accenture Business Consulting, Citibank, Bank of America, KPMG, Coca Cola, PepsiCo and Hewitt Associates, amongst others, came for the first time.

In terms of acceptances at IIM-A, continuing the roll by the top investment banks, Goldman Sachs had the highest number of acceptances (17), followed by Lehman Brothers (15) and Merrill Lynch (13).

Among the consulting firms, McKinsey and Co., The Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co. led the charge. The Private Equity sector saw a total of 15 acceptances. A total of 123 students from the 2007-2009 batch at IIM-A will be interning abroad across various firms and functional roles.

Across all slots, the sector-wise breakup for students at IIM-B was Investment Banking (19 per cent), Private Equity (11 per cent), Management Consulting (15 per cent), Financial Services (16 per cent), Marketing and General Management (28 per cent), Systems (8 per cent) and Asset Management (3 per cent).

A noticeable trend in the summer placements this year was the number of students interning abroad, with the number crossing 110 (101 last year) this year.