Barclays Capital celebrates first in-house trainees to qualify

The investment bank announced that five trainees have completed its first ever two-year in-house training programme, where they got to learn the world of finance “inside out”.

Director of the legal department and principal trainer Francis Dickinson said that the bank had taken the initial decision to home grow its own talent because of the rapid expansion of its 97-strong legal department.

He said: “There’s quite a lot of expertise within Barclays Capital so it’s a perfect learning environment for trainees. It’s great because we’ve now got five newly-qualified lawyers who are ready to hit the ground running and are very commercially aware because they’ve seen all sides of the business through the seat rotation we do.”

Graduates taking part in the legal training programme get to experience four six-month seat rotations within various teams in the department including finance and business. There is also a mentoring system in place for each trainee throughout the two-year contract.

And Dickinson said the recession had been a great training ground for the first cohort of trainees.

He said: ““[Our NQs] have had a great training ground over the past couple of years and I think they’ve been fortunate to train in a dynamic environment and learnt a lot.”

Barclays Capital welcomed six new graduates to take part in its graduate programme this year in London and Singapore.