Goldman Sachs could be turning to Main Street.

The Wall Street firm has made some significant changes in recent weeks that hint at a strategic shift away from its traditionally elite clients and toward more common investors.

Last month the bank began offering a digital savings account, available to anyone with as little as a $1 deposit.

It launched GSBank.com after acquiring GE Capital's $16 billion deposit book and gaining about 145,000 retail depositors.

The online accounts offer an annual interest rate of $1.05%.

Goldman is also embarking on a new initiative to partner with small wealth-management firms and brokerages and lend to their clients — who are typically less wealthy than Goldman's own private-banking clients. The plan, according to Reuters, is to bring in more borrowers while avoiding a merger.

The shift has one analyst – CLSA's Mike Mayo – speculating that Goldman's next move could be to buy a big online broker, like E-Trade. Such a move would bring Goldman access to funding in the form of more deposits, and add to its earnings, Mayo wrote recently.

This kind of talk follows a disastrous first quarter for Goldman Sachs, in which earnings were down 60% and revenues in trading and banking were down 37% and 23%, respectively. Total revenues of $6.34 billion were the lowest for any first quarter since CEO Lloyd Blankfein took over in 2006, according to Bloomberg.

To be fair, it was a pretty rough quarter for most of the banks on Wall Street, due in large part to market conditions. But near-zero interest rates and post-financial-crisis regulations that limit trading activity have been hampering Wall Street profits for years.

It's led some analysts to raise questions about Goldman's long-term strategy, and whether it can ever be as profitable as it was in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

On a call following the earnings release last month, Rafferty Capital Markets' Dick Bove pressed CFO Harvey Schwartz on when the firm would stop "waiting for the tide to come in" and start entering radically new business lines.

"When do you get control of your destiny, as opposed to sitting here for nine years letting the world control where you are and what you're doing?" Bove asked.

"If we felt like there is a client segment or transaction we could do that would benefit our shareholders and we could deliver to those clients, we would do it," Schwartz said in response. "We're open-minded."

CLSA's Mayo described a few potential paths for Goldman Sachs in a recent note.

First, Mayo wrote, it can carry on with its "last-man-standing strategy," grabbing market share where it can while other banks pull back. Second, it can transform into a boutique advisory bank "on steroids" and shrink its trading arm. Or it can accelerate its expansion into traditional banking.

It looks like the bank may be leaning towards the latter.

SEE ALSO: Mayo said, noting that the firm will launch a consumer lending platform later this year.

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Investment bankers are increasingly leaving Wall Street to work for the companies they advise — and it's starting to hurt the banking industry in more ways that one.

JPMorgan's Alejandro Vicente, a managing director in consumer goods, is the latest to make the jump.

He's leaving to work for JAB Holdings, the Keurig and Caribou Coffee owner that last week announced it was buying Krispy Kreme, the Financial Times' Arash Massoudi reports.

Vicente will be working on transactions for the company, which has been on a buying spree lately and also owns stakes in a number of consumer-products brands.

But he's not the only one. Earlier this year, former Morgan Stanley banker Alban de La Sabliere joined the French drug maker Sanofi, which is now bidding to buy the pharmaceutical company Medivation.

Also in healthcare, JPMorgan banker Henry Gosebruch last fall left the bank for AbbVie.

Here are some more high-profile departures:

• In July, Blackstone's chief financial officer, Laurence Tosi, announced his decision to jump ship for tech startup Airbnb.
• Last March, Morgan Stanley's CFO, Ruth Porat, went to Google.
• The Carlyle Group's former cochief operating officer, Mike Cavanagh, left to become Comcast's CFO. Before Carlyle, Cavanagh coheaded corporate and investment banking at JPMorgan.
• Former Goldman Sachs tech banker Anthony Noto is now CFO at Twitter.
• Former Credit Suisse tech banker Imran Khan is now Snapchat's chief strategy officer.

The departures are a double-edged sword for banks. Not only are they losing top talent, but they could begin to miss out on deals as companies turn to in-house experts rather than hire on teams of bankers.

We saw that a couple of weeks ago with AbbVie's $5.8 billion deal for Stemcentrx and Comcast's $3.8 billion deal for DreamWorks. Neither acquirer hired outside bankers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both recently hired bankers from Wall Street.

That meant banks missed out on what could have been $45 million in advisory fees for those two deals, according to estimates from Freeman & Co.

In other words, this could be the beginning of a big problem for Wall Street.

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One business has been dragging Wall Street down for years — and it took an even bigger-than-usual nosedive at the start of 2016.

Revenues in the fixed-income, currencies, and commodities business dropped 28% year-on-year in the first quarter, according to the data-analytics company Coalition.

Fixed-income, currencies, and commodities, or FICC, trading is the largest business for Wall Street banks.

The significant decline in revenues was driven by a weak trading environment for the first two months of the year, according to Coalition.

The period also saw fewer one-off events than the first quarter of 2015, when the Swiss central bank unpegged its currency from the euro, for example.

Total FICC revenues came in at $17.8 billion for the quarter, down from $24.8 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

The hardest hit product was securitization, where revenues were down 42% year-on-year. Poor performance there was driven by declines in mortgage-backed securities activity, according to Coalition.

On the other hand, G10 Rates revenues were down only 8%, thanks to strong corporate client activity and increased volatility, which drove improved performance from the Americas and Japan.

What's perhaps more concerning for Wall Street, however, is the long-term trend. In 2011, FICC revenues came in at $34.8 billion for the first quarter. They've declined 49% in the five years since.

Have a look:

SEE ALSO: Wall Street's shrinking workforce in one chart

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Wall Street's workforce is shrinking.

Front-office headcount at investment banks across the Street has dropped 21% over the past five years, according to the data-analytics firm Coalition.

Total headcount in the first quarter of 2016 was down 2% from the same period a year ago.

Fixed-income, currencies, and commodities — or FICC — trading businesses saw the biggest staffing declines in the first quarter, dropping 5% to 18,300 people from 19,200 last year.

Equities-trading headcount dropped 1% to 18,800 people in Q1, down from 19,000 the year before, while investment-banking headcount came in at 17,700, down 1% from 17,900 in the year-ago quarter.

Fixed income has also seen the largest headcount decline over the longer term. It's down 32% over the past five years, while equities headcount is down 12% and investment-banking headcount is down 14% over the same period.

Revenues in the fixed-income division were down 28% year-on-year in the first quarter, and down 49% over the five-year period.

SEE ALSO: This brutal chart puts you at the heart of Wall Street's pain

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Wall Street internship season is just around the corner.

Over the coming weeks, thousands of aspiring young bankers and traders will flock to New York City and other financial hubs to get a taste of life on the Street.

Of course, these internships can be intimidating. You've heard the horror stories about the 100-hour workweeks. The grunt work. The tight deadlines.

But it is possible to survive your Wall Street internship and, according to one former Goldman Sachs intern, even enjoy it.

The Goldman intern, who will be returning to the bank this summer as a full-time analyst, told us how he did it.

Here's his advice:

1. Ask for work early in the day.

This might sound counterintuitive, but interns often have downtime during the day. The reason their work hours can run so long through the week is that work can emerge late at night, and it often has a tight deadline.

Every intern's nightmare is having a last-minute assignment dropped on his or her desk at 9 or 10 p.m. The easiest way to avoid this, the Goldman Sachs intern said, is to ask for as much work as possible early on in the day.

If you're already staffed on a ton of projects, your analyst or associate is more likely to turn to somebody else who is a bit less busy than you at the end of the day.

2. Always get through your 'Excel work' first.

In an HR-driven attempt to improve the internship experience, many top Wall Street banks have set rules on how many hours interns can physically spend in the office. Bank of America, for example, does not expect interns to work between midnight and 9 a.m., while Goldman Sachs interns must swipe out and leave the building by midnight and not return until 7 a.m.

Sometimes interns still have work to do, even if they can't be in the building, so here's the hack: If you can't finish all your work by the time you must leave, then at least finish everything you need to do on Excel.

It's much easier to touch up a PowerPoint presentation from your laptop at home than to try to work in complicated spreadsheets on detailed models.

Another tip: Buy yourself a PC and a couple of screens to use at home.

3. Goldman Sachs has entire teams dedicated to making your life easier. Use them!

Most banks have some strategic services for analysts, but Goldman's team is especially elaborate.

The intern told us it was "probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen" and was designed "to make analyst life easier."

Goldman has a variety of tools all on one proprietary "strategies" web page. You can find just about anything you need there, from presentation services in which they'll make nice-looking slides for your coming presentation to the data group that can pull multiples for you or set you up with a chart at a moment's notice.

So look into what strategy tools your bank has to offer, regardless of which firm you intern with.

4. You will get a boatload of work. Learn to prioritize it.

You won't have a lot of free time when you start interning, so you'll have to create time to do the work you need to do. How?

"The biggest part of the job I saw was being efficient and prioritizing what you should do," the Goldman intern told us.

At any given time, he would be staffed on three or four different teams, which meant he could go from having no work one minute to a whole slew of assignments the next.

That's why, whenever an analyst or associate gave him a new project, he would immediately ask when the person wanted it finished by. That way he could prioritize his work, rather than going after whatever assignment was at the top of the pile.

He said that sometimes, if all of his assignments were due by the next morning, he would take his chances on which ones would be looked at first and narrow it down that way.

5. Finishing your work super-fast isn't always the best way to do it.

This is a big one. Of course there will always be deadline pressure at investment banks. And that's not to be ignored! But neither is making sure the quality of your work is up to snuff.

"The one thing you learn is, trying to get stuff done fast is different than doing it efficiently," the intern said.

If you work too quickly, there will definitely be mistakes. And that looks bad for you.

The assignment will go to a higher-up, like an associate, who inevitably returns it covered in red markups. Remember the analysts and associates are staffed on more teams than you are, so that will only add to their stress load.

It's much better to make the time to double-check your work — and have to do it only once.

SEE ALSO: Inside Steve Cohen's groundbreaking 'Academy' poaching young talent from Wall Street

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In just a few weeks, hundreds of students will flock to investment banks to try their hands as young financiers.

If you're one of those people — about to kick off a Wall Street internship — you might be wondering how to prepare.

Luckily, Goldman Sachs asked five of its former interns for their advice on how to prepare for life on the Street.

They're all full-time employees now, working in various divisions and cities around the world.

Have a look at what they had to say.

Amy – Analyst, Finance Division, Salt Lake City

"I did not come from a finance background. If you’re like me, read relevant news and take the firm’s online training – it helped me feel up to speed when I started. I also talked to my buddy which helped me wrap my head around what the summer experience was going to be like and how to get situated in Salt Lake City."

Arnie – Associate, Investment Management Division, New York

"Try to connect with any ambassadors on your campus who have been through the internship experience. Use the training resources but don’t think you need to know everything before you start. The firm saw the potential for you to be successful here because of your passion and skills and they expect to train you; you aren’t supposed to be an expert on your first day."

Elaine – Analyst, Investment Banking Division, Hong Kong

"Prepare in any way that makes you feel confident and ready to jump in. I went back to textbooks from my finance and accounting courses to brush up on my fundamentals even though divisions like Investment Banking teach you the technical skills you need during orientation and on the job."

Investment bankers at UBS can now take at least two hours of "personal time" a week in the latest attempt by a bank to retain staff with a better work-life balance.

In a profession known for its grueling schedules, banks around the world are trying to lighten workloads to lower stress levels, especially among junior bankers.

The UBS policy, dubbed "take two", aims to give bankers more flexible hours without colleagues having to pick up too much slack.

The scheme, which is offered to about 6,000 people working for UBS in investment banking globally, was initiated by investment bank president Andrea Orcel following a staff survey.

"Our industry is often criticized for poor work-life balance, so we asked our employees to come up with ideas and find solutions to the issues that matter to them," the 53-year old banker told Reuters in an interview.

Most banks struggle though to translate flexibility into viable policies as multi-billion deals are typically signed at night after days of non-stop negotiations, with junior bankers typically bearing the brunt of the work.

Ambitious graduates often refer to the "magic roundabout" where they get a taxi home after dawn and leave it waiting while they get ready to return to work.

Now banks, facing growing competition from technology companies, hedge funds and private equity firms who offer junior bankers better pay and hours, are having to act.

Earlier this year JPMorgan Chase & Co told its investment bank staff they should take weekends off unless they were working on a major deal.

UBS, which is battling weak earnings with cost-cutting, says it wants to give investment bankers more flexibility.

"You can't force people to work longer or shorter hours: people don't like being forced," said Orcel.

"All you can ask for is that they get their job done, but at the same time grant them enough flexibility...to find a balance that works for them."

Since May 4, junior and senior bankers working within the same team at UBS can use at least two hours per week for personal matters, as long as co-workers agree to cover for them.

"It's a 'give and take' exercise: people take two but also need to give two when their colleagues are away," said Orcel, who joined UBS in 2012, adding it should free up time for family events or activities like marathon training without any stigma.

"In an ideal world we wouldn't need this initiative, it would happen anyway. But for now having a branded initiative takes away the concern of finishing early or starting late."

UBS said 145 teams signed up to the plan in its first week.

Marathon Culture

A workaholic race to succeed, involving all-nighters and meals at desks, is commonplace in banking.

In 2013, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern died after allegedly working 72 hours without sleep. An inquest later ruled that he had died of natural causes, and BAML launched an internal review into working conditions for junior employees.

Orcel said the workaholic culture needs to change and highlighted Copenhagen, where bank offices are empty at 5pm as staff collect children from school but then work from home.

"Many junior bankers often end up giving 'face time'. Even if they finish early they don't want to leave because they believe it doesn't look good," he said.

UBS has also launched "Rotation 100", allowing around 100 junior bankers to take stints in other regions or temporarily cover other sectors or products for up to three months in a bid to keep its best employees happy.

"It's about empowering our employees so they feel - and are - treated like owners of this business and owners of their careers," said Orcel.

UBS is not alone in trying to adapt, in November Goldman Sachs made changes designed to retain junior bankers, including promoting them more quickly and encouraging mobility.

And in February, Reuters reported that Credit Suisse was establishing a fast-track program for top-performing juniors.

(Reporting by Anjuli Davies and Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Smith)

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LONDON (Reuters) - Credit Suisse has told its staff to leave work by 7pm on a Friday and not return until at least Saturday lunchtime, unless a big deal is in the works.

Dubbed "Protecting Friday Night", the Swiss bank's initiative is part of a wider drive by investment banks to soften their workaholic image and stop talented staff leaving for jobs in other areas such as technology or private equity.

In an email dated May 23, Credit Suisse told its staff in the EMEA investment banking and capital markets department that they should leave the office by 7pm on a Friday and not return until at least midday on Saturday -- unless a major deal is launching or imminent, bank insiders told Reuters.

Such instructions may seem outlandish to people working in other industries, where leaving work on a Friday and having a drink with friends or a family meal is still the norm.

But for bankers, particularly juniors, who frequently find themselves working into the small hours on Fridays and at weekends, the diktat may bring some relief.

"We have given a great deal of thought into how we can provide some time off for our bankers," said Marisa Drew, co-head of EMEA Investment Banking and Capital Markets Division said, adding that Credit Suisse had sought feedback, in particular from junior staff, on weekends and work-life balance.

"(This allows)...employees to make firm plans with family and friends and ensures that this time will be respected."

Credit Suisse is not alone in trying to improve the lot of its employees, with the focus shifting from pay and bonuses.

Staff at UBS can now take at least two hours of "personal time" a week, as the bank tries to retain staff by offering a better work-life balance, while JPMorgan told its investment bank staff they should take weekends off, unless they were working on a major deal.

"It means you can at least make plans one night of the week," a person at Credit Suisse said of the move.

Credit Suisse has also launched a fast-track program for top-performing investment banking juniors, in an effort to attract and retain employees.

(Editing by Adrian Croft and Alexander Smith)

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Berenberg Capital Markets, part of the 426-year-old German bank, Berenberg, has expanded its presence in the US by hiring a new head of equity capital markets.

James Ramp, who was formerly a managing director at BNY Convergex and Susquehanna International Group, has joined Berenberg as a director for US equities.

Berenberg has offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco.

Traditionally a private bank, it offers capital markets and asset management services in the US, and opened a trading desk in New York last September. 

The firm has assets under management of €40 billion ($45.4 billion) and roughly 1,300 employees around the world, according to its website. 

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A veteran Wall Street dealmaker is bowing out.

Goldman Sachs' head of cross-border mergers and acquisitions, James Del Favero, is retiring from the firm after nearly three decades.

Del Favero joined Goldman Sachs' mergers-and-acquisitions team in New York in 1989, according an internal memo seen by Business Insider.

He spent time at the firm's London and Sydney offices before returning to New York and being named managing director in 1999 and parnter in 2004.

"James has been instrumental in shaping and defining the firm’s M&A franchise, particularly in developing our cross-border business, formalizing our fairness process and enhancing M&A training," read the memo, which was signed by investment banking coheads Richard Gnodde, David Solomon, and John Waldron.

"He has been a trusted advisor to many clients across industries and regions and has played a central role in many innovative and complex transactions."

Bloomberg's Ed Hammond first reported the departure.

Del Favero has worked on transactions including British American Tobacco's deal with RJ Reynolds Tobacco and General Electric's deal with the Chinese multinational Haier, according to 

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Ever wonder which college major is most likely to get you a job on Wall Street?

Business Insider turned to Emolument, a salary-benchmarking website that collects self-reported pay data, to find out which college majors are most common in finance.

They gathered data on 840 finance professionals in New York at the analyst, associate, vice president, and director level.

The respondents come from a number of firms, including Citigroup, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as well as smaller banks, asset managers, and hedge funds. They are all front-office professionals, and two-thirds work at banks, while one-third works on the buy-side.

Emolument found that, while the clear majority of Wall Street professionals studied something related to finance, there are definitely a few history and geography majors out there.

So humanities students, don't give up hope.

Here is the breakdown.

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At the analyst level, accounting, business, and finance are by far the most popular majors for Wall Streeters. Economics follows in second place.

The same majors are even more common among associates on Wall Street.

Accounting, business, and finance majors are the clear majority at the vice-president level, too.

It's not every day that a group of young analysts gets to pitch an idea close to their hearts to a Wall Street chief executive.

But that was the case for a handful of Goldman Sachs junior staffers this week who found themselves in a meeting with CEO Lloyd Blankfein and some of his top lieutenants, presenting months of their own hard work and research.

They were finalists in the "Goldman Sachs Gives Analyst Impact Fund" competition, in which analysts around the world who've been with the firm for more than a year vied for a grant for the nonprofit organization of their choice.

The initiative, launched this year, is funded by Goldman Sachs Gives, the philanthropic fund sponsored by the firm's partners, and judged by the partnership committee.

"If you would have told me a few years ago that as a second-year analyst at Goldman, I would have the opportunity to be pitching to Lloyd Blankfein and the partnership committee on behalf of an organization that I vehemently believed in ... I would tell you you're crazy,"Olivia Benjamin, a member of the winning analyst team, told Business Insider.

Benjamin, an analyst in the investment management division's Alternative Investments and Manager Selection group, teamed up with fellow analysts Paul Antonios, from the securities division; Ashley Macaulay, from the investment management division; and Peter Heye and Sam Obletz from the investment banking division.

They pitched the nonprofit Bayes Impact, which uses data to help the underserved by building open-source software products that are donated to disadvantaged citizens.

Three winning grants were awarded this week — $100,000 for the first-prize winners, $50,000 for second prize, and $25,000 for third prize. Benjamin's team, which won the $100,000 grant, was able to secure an additional $100,000 in matching Goldman Sachs Gives commitments from other partners for Bayes Impact.

Recruiters and human-resource staff across the Street know that millennials want to feel like their work has an impact. In an effort to hire and retain top talent, investment banks have been rolling out increasingly creative initiatives for junior staff.

Barclays, for example, recently launched a half-day "ideation workshop,"giving junior bankers the chance to play startup founders for the day and develop problem solving, presentation, and teamwork skills. Goldman Sachs is also overhauling the way it provides feedback to better suit the needs of millennial employees.

"Folks that are coming into the firm out of universities are looking to do more,"Edith Cooper, Goldman Sachs' head of human capital investment and vice chairwoman of the partnership committee, told Business Insider.

"So many of them have recognized their role in society, so we felt that it was important for them to be able to really express those interests and those causes that they're excited about and partner literally with the most senior ranks of the firm on making a difference in these organizations," she added.

After the competition was announced in March, 124 teams comprising some 450 analysts submitted applications. With the help of volunteer judges at the vice president level, those were eventually whittled down to six final teams.

At that stage, the analyst groups were each paired up with two vice presidents, who coached them through the in-person pitching process.

Mark Wetzel, a VP in the merchant bank, and Casey LaFlamme, a VP in securities, coached the winning team. By the time they got in front of the partnership committee, the team had rehearsed their eight-minute pitch upward of 40 times, Benjamin said.

They had settled on Bayes after searching for an organization that demonstrated impact, scalability, and innovation. The analysts embarked on an extensive due-diligence process, getting to know Bayes' management team and connecting them with Goldman's own information security team.

Bayes' cofounders Paul Duan, 24, and Eric Liu, 25, were similar both in mindset and in age to the analysts, who are between 23 and 25 years old.

"We were initially drawn to them as a group of [young], like-minded individuals that had a passion to affect impact on a very large scale in real time," Benjamin said. "That's something tech can do in a way that nothing else can."

Liu said the Goldman Sachs juniors went out of their way to get to know his organization — digging into its model, asking for filings and documents, getting to know individual groups within the company, and even speaking to its board members.

"For a group of people that had no experience in the nonprofit space, they probably came out with a stronger pitch for Bayes than I've given before," he said.

Having been introduced to Goldman's information security team and the security division's strats team, Bayes will meet next week with Goldman Sachs Gives to discuss next steps and how the bank can continue to work with the organization.

The second-place grant will be given to Digital Green Foundation, which a team of three from Bengaluru pitched. In third place is Solar Aid, which was pitched by a team of three from London.

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Wall Street banking careers have for decades followed a common pattern.

Historically, you would join a firm as an analyst right out of college — if not earlier as an intern — and you'd work your way up through the ranks of associate, vice president, managing director, and, at some banks, partner.

You'd remain loyal to the firm for 30-odd years and retire in your 50s with a million dollars in the bank.

"That rule is out the window," one veteran dealmaker at a top Wall Street bank told Business Insider recently.

A tough business cycle has made it harder for many banks to continue paying dealmakers competitive wages. Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank slashed their bonus pools in 2015. At Goldman Sachs, employee compensation and benefits were down 40% in the first quarter this year, as revenues plunged and the firm continued to replace senior staff members with junior bankers.

Additionally, bulge-bracket firms are seeing increased competition for talent from boutique shops, which are typically smaller and specialize in mergers and acquisitions. The boutiques are starting to land big business — and they are poaching top dealmakers to do it.

"It's going to put pressure on organizations, without question," the veteran banker we spoke with said.

The big banks are also seeing top performers leave for the corporate companies they advise.

Here are some of the big moves in the past year:

• JPMorgan's Alejandro Vicente joined JAB Holdings.
• Morgan Stanley's Alban de La Sabliere joined the French drugmaker Sanofi.
• JPMorgan's Henry Gosebruch went to AbbVie.
• Blackstone's chief financial officer Laurence Tosi went to Airbnb.

Before that there was Goldman Sachs' Anthony Noto, who joined Twitter as CFO; Morgan Stanley's Ruth Porat, who became CFO at Google; and Credit Suisse's Imran Khan, who became Snapchat's chief strategy officer.

Of course, many bankers have told us that a handful of departures do not signify a real trend. Some said departures like this tend to happen in cycles.

That argument would certainly make sense in the current economic context. Business for equity capital markets bankers has dropped off a cliff in 2016, with the fewest first-quarter initial public offerings since 2009. Mergers-and-acquisitions activity is also down significantly from the past couple of years.

But the phenomenon could also turn into a more permanent trend.

"If we go into a real slowdown from an M&A and capital markets activity standpoint, the pressure will be very large on a lot of firms," the veteran banker said, though he does not believe we're there yet.

"Any banker with a brain … is saying to himself or herself, 'Do I need an exit strategy, and if so, what is my exit strategy?' And the reality is that a lot of folks in corporate America have been doing better on average."

He also highlighted the taxing lifestyle of an investment banker, typically associated with long hours and tight deadlines.

"Maybe [working for a corporate] is easier than working hard and being a banker and having to go prostrate in front of clients and grovel for business …. rather than being the CFO and having people present to you," he said.

Investment banking as a whole has become a less-attractive career option. A survey last year showed that only 4% of Harvard Business School students graduating wanted to work in investment banking. And a group of hedge fund interns told us last summer that they felt "a monkey" could do the job of an investment-banking summer analyst.

Wall Street firms are making a concerted effort to change the image associated with banking. Just in the past couple of weeks, five bulge-bracket firms have rolled out new initiatives designed to improve office culture and encourage work-life balance.

Credit Suisse is giving bankers Friday nights off, UBS is giving bankers two hours of "personal time" a week, JPMorgan is relaxing its dress code, Morgan Stanley is offering vice presidents four-week paid sabbaticals, and both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are updating their performance reviews to give more qualitative and frequent feedback to employees.

Whether that will be enough to stem the tide of departures remains to be seen. For his part, the veteran banker we spoke with does not foresee the issue going away anytime soon.

"It's started — a lot of people are thinking about the end game," the senior banker told us. "I expect that to continue."

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If you graduated or are soon going to graduate as a business major, there are many reasons you might be interested in pursuing financial analyst roles.

If you can handle the stressful hours, they are jobs that have a high median salaries and are expected to grow by 12% by 2024 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a much faster growth rate than the national average for all professions. There's also a high opportunity for upward mobility, as many financial analyst jobs can lead to bigger and better gigs down the road, once you have experience under your belt.

If you’re trying to prepare for an eventual career in finance, but are still looking to round out your knowledge of the subject, Udemy is currently offering The Complete Financial Analyst Course that might be a perfect fit for you.

Through the course, you'll first go through the fundamentals of Excel, as essential a skill as there is in finance. Next, you’ll be introduced to the basics of finance: interest rates, loan calculations, time value of money, and present and future value of cash flows. You’ll start by learning to read and understand a company’s profit and loss statement, and by the end of the course you’ll be constructing them from scratch yourself.

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DON'T MISS: Learn to master Excel, the finance industry's most powerful tool, with this online class

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Where did the first half of the year go?

The past six months have flown by, and we're already approaching the end of the first half of the year. 

That means it is time to check in on how Wall Street banks stack up in dealmaking. 

It has been a tough start to the year. Industry-wide fees from mergers and acquisitions work, equity- and debt-capital markets, and syndicated loans come to $31.4 billion, the lowest first half total since 2010, according to Dealogic's preliminary stats for the first half. 

JPMorgan leads the pack, with an 8.1% market share. The US bank also tops the fee rankings for equity and debt capital markets. Here's how the banks stack up:

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JPMorgan has earned the most in investment-banking fees, with $2.5 billion.

Goldman Sachs is still No. 1 in mergers and acquisitions, with $1.1 billion in fees.

JPMorgan has moved to the top spot for equity-capital-markets work, generating $434 million in fees.

Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat is attempting to reassure employees following Britain's surprise decision on Thursday to leave the European Union.

In an internal memo sent to staff on Friday, the chief executive said the bank has been preparing for this outcome since last year.

In addition to the volatility and potential broader economic implications spurred by Brexit, it could also hurt global banks like Citi because many of them have large workforces in the UK.

Citi employs more than 9,000 people in the UK. Its shares are leading declines among the biggest US banks in the wake of the news — down 8% as of 12:23 p.m. in New York.

London-based employees who are not British citizens are now facing uncertainty about the future of their immigration status in the UK, and some firms might consider moving their European headquarters out of London.

Here is the full memo, which was cosigned by Jim Cowles, the CEO for Europe, Middle East and Africa:

"You are no doubt aware that yesterday, after a long and thorough debate, the British public has voted to leave the European Union.

"The UK is unlikely to formally exit the EU for at least two years, and during this period there will be no change in the way Citi is able to conduct its business.

"Last year, we created a group of senior leaders from across our businesses and functions to ensure we were prepared for this possible outcome. While the result of the vote is not what we would have preferred, our diligent work over the past six months means we can be confident that Citi is well positioned to continue to serve our clients.

"One thing that is very clear today is that our clients need our support. Yesterday's vote is having significant repercussions within the financial markets, which could affect the UK economy. This is a critical time for our client relationships, and we ask that you provide clients with all possible support as they work through how yesterday's vote affects them.

"For those EU nationals currently working in the UK and UK nationals in the EU, the outcome of the vote has no immediate effect on the terms of your employment. Should you have additional questions, please contact your manager or your local HR representative.

"We will update you regularly throughout this upcoming period. Thank you for your hard work, continued focus and all that you do for our clients."

SEE ALSO: Here's the Brexit memo Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein sent to staff

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JPMorgan is taking a new approach to working with tech startups.

The firm is expected to launch a residency program for financial technology, or fintech, companies on Thursday in an effort to tackle strategic and security-related challenges.

The in-residence startups will be tasked with finding innovative solutions to specific challenges — which will be listed on JPMorgan's website — using technologies like distributed ledger, big data, or machine learning.

The program is the latest step by a Wall Street bank to improve its technology. Many firms are choosing to work with fintech startups rather than risk getting disrupted by them.

Some, like Barclays and Deutsche Bank, have launched startup accelerators. Others are making strategic investments in the tech companies.

But JPMorgan's residence program is a little different: The corporate and investment bank will house the fintech companies for six months in its offices around the world, and they will work alongside the bank's own businesses.

JPMorgan has been proactive about incorporating fintech into its operations. It launched a trial project earlier this year with the blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings. Blythe Masters, its CEO, is a former JPMorgan executive. 

The firm is also developing new technologies in-house and employs about 40,000 technologists across the firm, with a $9 billion technology budget.

"Fintech and new capabilities, they are crucial for everything that we do," Daniel Pinto, the head of the corporate investment bank, said at JPMorgan's Investor Day in February.

He announced at the time that the firm would be creating the residency program and said that, despite JPMorgan building most of the technology it uses, the firm was not afraid to partner with startups to codevelop certain applications.

The "business of technology," Pinto said, is no longer a back-office concern, but rather "totally integrated" into the firm's businesses.

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You may know what investment bankers tend to look like, or what kind of qualifications they usually have — but how much do you know about what Wall Street bankers actually do?

Alan Li, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, provided the most straightforward explanation we've ever heard on a recent episode of his new podcast, "The Vampire Squid."

"I like to compare it to a consulting firm because everyone understands what consulting firms do," Li said. "A consulting firm has a project or an assignment from a client and they make an action or they make a plan and recommend it to their client."

He continued:

"An investment bank does something very similar. They do provide advice to their clients, but they usually do it through more of a financial lens. So using Excel a lot more, providing valuation advice — and they actually see the deal through to the very end. So if a company is going public, an investment bank is not going to recommend them to go public, and that's it; an investment bank is going to take them through every step of the way until the company is public, and even after they're public, they still maintain a relationship with the client and provide them with other services that they need."

In other words, investment banks provide advice to companies, usually on some sort of deal, like a stock offering or an acquisition of another company.

Li, who worked in tech, media, and telecom banking in Goldman Sachs' San Francisco office, launched the podcast to address a "lack of transparency" around finance.

The first few episodes include an introduction to Li and the podcast, an overview of investment banking, and a detailed look at the initial public offering process. Next up will be an episode debunking Wall Street jargon and explaining different types of financial statements.

You can find the podcast on Li's blog or on iTunes.

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US banks are set to release their second-quarter earnings, starting with JPMorgan on Thursday, and analysts are all talking about one thing: interest rates.

"Does the global economy slow? If so, that's going to put pressure on longer-term rates, and generally that's not a good thing for bank stocks," said KBW's Brian Kleinhanzl at an event on Tuesday.

Bank profitability is largely based on the rate at which they make loans. Lower global interest rates, in turn, negatively affect bank bottom lines.

The big story during the second quarter was the UK's decision in June to leave the European Union, which sent shockwaves through markets and could deter central banks from raising interest rates anytime soon.

At KBW, analysts have removed all interest rate increases from their estimates through 2017.

On the other hand, Brexit's immediate impact — heightened market volatility — was likely a boon for banks in the second quarter as it meant improved trading conditions.

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, for example, posted record trading volumes in the hours following the EU referendum. At one point, JPMorgan was processing 1,000 trading tickets per second, according to CEO Jamie Dimon.

But the referendum's long-term effect is a different story.

Here's what other Wall Street analysts had to say about interest rates:

• Goldman Sachs' Richard Ramsden: "While 2Q results should be 'OK,' we believe forward EPS are at risk from low rates and uncertainty around capital markets. [...] We estimate there could be 7% downside risk to estimates in '17 and 13% in '18 if long-term rates were to stay at current levels and we don't get any additional fed rate hikes."
• Barclays' Jason Goldberg: "The rate backdrop has certainly become more challenging with the probability of a Fed hike pushed out (from over 50% at the time of 1Q16 EPS calls to less than 15% currently) and rates declines (10yr at all-time low, 2s/10s at 8.5yr low)."
• Macquarie's Piers Brown, Vardhman Jain, David Konrad, and Zev Zaretsky: "Increased uncertainty regarding new negotiations between UK and EU is expected to take its toll on global growth and also adversely changes the interest rate outlook."
• S&P Global Market Intelligence' Erik Oja: "Bank revenues are driven by interest rate spreads and asset growth, and helped by credit quality, plus fee income. Unfortunately, low interest rates appear to be with us for the foreseeable future. [...] Low interest rates and a shallow yield curve are a long-term headwind, heightened by the recent Brexit vote. US long-term interest rates have been pushed downwards for years by a continuing bond market rally, and short-term interest rates reflect the Fed's reluctance to raise rates during this period of global political turmoil."

JPMorgan will report earnings around 6:45 a.m. ET Thursday, followed by Citi and Wells Fargo on Friday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Monday, Goldman Sachs on Tuesday, and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday. We'll be back with results as they roll in.

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The head of the investment bank at UBS is warning that the bank "most probably we would need to consider moving a number of our [London] employees to an EU country" in the wake of the Brexit vote, as the Treasury puts pressure on banks to keep quiet and carry on.

UBS' investment bank chief Andrea Orcel told Bloomberg TV this week that a "significant percentage" of UBS’s 5,000 London employees would likely have to move if the UK lost its passporting and euro clearing rights. But he said the UBS would still have a base in the UK.

Orcel's warning comes as the Financial Times reports that the Treasury is putting pressure on banks to keep quiet about potential job losses in the UK, warning it is unhelpful.

Several investment banks have warned that jobs may have to move. Goldman Sachs' cohead of investment banking said shortly after the vote: "If passporting was totally removed, we would have to adjust our footprint and where people were located." JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has also repeatedly warned that the bank may have to relocate some of its 16,000 UK staff to mainland Europe.

Former Chancellor George Osborne summoned representatives of the biggest investment banks in the UK to the Treasury last week, eventually releasing a joint statement signed by them all saying they will work together "to help London retain its position as the leading international financial center."

The FT claims that the Treasury originally wanted the banks to sign an even more strongly worded statement pledging support to London, but that this was rejected by the banks.

However, it is worth noting that overnight, Osborne was sacked as Chancellor by newly installed prime minister Theresa May.

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