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This year, rather obviously, has been decidedly bleak for graduates attempting to break into investment banking, with places down by around 40% and the majority of these being filled by internship conversions. But the picture is looking brighter for 2010.

The first reason for optimism is that places on investment banking graduate schemes are looking likely to increase in 2010. They may not hit the highs of 2007, but there will be a lot more opportunities than this year.

"Barclays Capital will be hiring more graduates globally in 2010, and we anticipate an increase of between 20-30% in comparison to 2009," says Jane Clark, head of campus recruitment, Europe and Asia at the bank.

Similarly, Brian Hood, head of graduate recruitment at Citi, says graduate numbers are definitely going to be up next year. They’re also planning to hire graduates into private banking for the first time.

"We're in discussions to introduce a new private banking programme for next year, which will provide more opportunities. Overall we are confident about graduate recruitment for 2010,” he says.

Credit Suisse, which took on 150-250 graduates this year, intends to recruit 350-450 in 2010, says Jim Richardson, the bank's head of EMEA graduate recruitment. The largest proportion of these will be within investment banking, information technology and securities.

Obviously these are still estimates, no doubt predicated on very positive results for the majority of investment banks in the first half of 2009. But even UBS, which has fared particularly badly so far this year, intends to recruit more than the "atypically low number of students" in 2009, according to Lyle Andrews, head of investment banking graduate recruitment EMEA at the bank.

But will all the places go to interns?

There's also the question of whether banks will actually look to recruit externally for these roles, rather than simply offer the majority of them to students who managed to secure an internship. Here, it's a bit of a mixed picture.

Hood says Citi will be back on campus to hire for positions within most divisions, as will BarCap, while Credit Suisse and UBS anticipate filling the majority of places through internships.

But Steph Ahrens, EMEA head of firmwide graduate recruitment at Morgan Stanley, believes it's a little more complicated and demand will vary across different divisions.

"We expect to see strong demand for graduates to join our investment banking, global capital markets, private wealth management and sales & trading. Other areas, such as investment management, equity research, IT and finance and operations should be able to comfortably fill their 2010 demand with intern conversions," she says.