British entry-level bankers caught cheating during exam sent home by JP Morgan

A spokesman for the US investment bank said: 'This behaviour is entirely unacceptable and is not tolerated at our firm'

A group of entry-level bankers from the UK have been sent home from New York in disgrace after they were caught cheating in training exams.

Three British graduates recruited by the US investment bank JP Morgan were kicked off an introductory training programme after they sneaked notes into their exams, a source said.

They were fired from the scheme and made to pay for their flights back to London.

A spokesman for JP Morgan said: “This behaviour is entirely unacceptable and is not tolerated at our firm.”

JP Morgan and a number of other US banks recruit a select few graduates every year from the UK and send them to Wall Street for an eight to ten-week orientation programme every September. They can expect to start on about £80,000-£90,000, according to the City recruitment firm Circle Square.

The graduates, who come from elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, have to take a variety of internal tests during the programme to progress to the next stage.

JP Morgan fired a total of 10 graduates who were found cheating in the tests, including the three Britons.

None of the people who were dismissed would have had access to JP Morgan’s customers due to their junior status at the bank.

The scandal follows a similar incident at Goldman Sachs, when it was forced to fire 20 trainee analysts in London and New York for cheating on tests earlier this month.

They were discovered to have been sharing answers during basic compliance tests as part of their training.

Goldman Sachs’ spokesman Sebastian Howell said: “This conduct was not just a clear violation of the rules, but completely inconsistent with the values we foster at the firm.”

Bank training programmes for graduates are some of the most selective in the world, with the Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein recently admitting the bank accepted just 8,000 out of 267,000 applications in one year.