Sunday Scaries Vol. 13

Three energy deals landed in one session. Brent topped $98 while the market punished Alphabet and Tesla for spending more on AI, and banks posted the most profitable quarter in US history with entry-level hiring down 24%. Quick recap before Monday.

Three energy deals landed in one session Tuesday, over $10 billion across two continents, none of them growth stories. Thursday brought two shocks at once: Brent above $98 and the market punishing Alphabet and Tesla for spending more on AI. Then the number that decides your next two years. Banks posted the most profitable quarter in US history while entry-level hiring sits 24% below 2024. Ammo for Monday.

Top Stories of the Week

1. Three energy and infrastructure deals landed in one session, and none of them were growth stories.

On July 21, over $10 billion of energy and infrastructure M&A hit the tape. Iberdrola bought 80% of Caruna, Finland's largest regulated power grid, paying 2 billion euros for the equity against a 5 billion euro enterprise value. Vår Energi merged with BlueNord in a $1.3 billion cash-and-stock deal, creating Europe's largest independent oil and gas producer. OCS bid £3.1 billion for Mitie at roughly a 40% premium. Two months ago we covered NextEra buying Dominion for $67 billion on the same regulated-utility thesis. Caruna is that trade run in Europe.

Why you care: Power and infrastructure is one of the busiest seats on the Street, and it pays everyone: Barclays, Jefferies, and SB1 Markets all booked fees on the same session. Three deals, three theses, one day.

Interview angle: "Three deals in one session, and all three were consolidation, not growth. Iberdrola bought regulated cash flow, Vår Energi bought scale in a declining basin, OCS bought contract density. When you cannot permit new assets and the market is not growing, you buy instead of build."

2. Brent hit $98 and the market punished the AI spenders. Two shocks, one session.

US equities sold off July 23 with two unrelated forces landing together. Brent briefly topped $98 as the Strait of Hormuz conflict escalated again, the same one that had WTI at $75 only two weeks ago. Then Alphabet fell 7% and Tesla 14% after both signaled higher AI capex. The S&P 500 closed down 1.21% to 7,408, the Nasdaq down 2.15%. Watch the AI trade move: four weeks ago the market wanted proof that $452 billion of capex would pay off, last week it sold chipmakers into a bear market, this week it punished the spenders themselves.

Why you care: Every interview tests macro fluency, and "market uncertainty" loses to naming both forces separately. They pull a bank opposite ways too: an oil spike fills the energy pipeline, a selloff closes ECM windows.

Interview angle: "Two factors, not general weakness. Brent near $98 is an input-cost shock that lands on transport, chemicals, and anything levered with fuel exposure. Alphabet and Tesla are the market repricing AI capex from a growth signal into a margin risk. Same session, different stories."

3. Banks posted the most profitable quarter in US history and cut 10,000 jobs. Junior hiring is down 24%.

JPMorgan posted $21.2 billion of net income in Q2, the highest quarterly profit any US bank has recorded. Goldman nearly doubled EPS to $20.98. Morgan Stanley equities set a record $6.3 billion. That same quarter, five banks cut more than 10,000 jobs between them, their largest combined reduction in at least six years. We ran the Q1 version in our first issue: six banks, 15,000 people, record profits. Two quarters is a pattern. The number inside it that applies to you: hiring for zero-to-two-year finance roles is down roughly 24% from early 2024, with AI automation of document work named as the driver.

Why you care: Record revenue is not producing bigger analyst classes and it will not. AI is taking first drafts, comp tables, and data pulls. It is not taking the client relationship. That gap is where your pitch lives.

Interview angle: "Best quarter in the industry's history and they still cut headcount. That makes the efficiency story structural, not cyclical. I do not read it as finance shrinking. I read it as the analyst job changing: less time on first drafts, more judgment and client exposure, earlier."

Deals of the Week

The $55B Electronic Arts buyout cleared the EU, and it is still the largest LBO ever attempted. On July 23 the European Commission cleared the take-private of Electronic Arts by Saudi Arabia's PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. Struck in September 2025 at $55 billion, carried by roughly $20 billion of committed debt from JPMorgan. Note the legal sheet: five law firms on the buy-side alone, because a sovereign fund, two sponsors, and that debt package all need separate counsel.

Buy-side (PIF, Silver Lake, Affinity Partners): J.P. Morgan (financial); Kirkland & Ellis (lead consortium and PIF), Gibson Dunn (PIF), Latham & Watkins and Simpson Thacher (Silver Lake), Sidley Austin (Affinity Partners) (legal)
Sell-side (Electronic Arts): Goldman Sachs (financial); Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz (legal)

OCS is buying Mitie for £3.1B at a 40% premium, and the UK take-private run keeps going. OCS bid 221.6 pence a share on July 21, valuing Mitie near £3.1 billion, or $4.1 billion, roughly 40% above its trading level. It merges two of the UK's largest facilities management businesses into a group heavy in government, defense, and healthcare outsourcing. That is the third UK-listed target in these pages this month, after Segro and easyJet. Sterling keeps clearing at premiums that would look rich anywhere else, because it started cheap.

Buy-side (OCS): Barclays, RBC Europe (financial); Weil, Gotshal & Manges lead, with Debevoise & Plimpton on antitrust and debt financing (legal)
Sell-side (Mitie): Linklaters (legal); no financial advisor named in available sources

Pro tip: Look at the Iberdrola headline again: 2 billion euros for 80% of the equity, 5 billion enterprise value. That gap is the most-asked technical in banking, sitting in a live deal. Enterprise value is equity plus net debt, because the buyer inherits the debt. Work it back: 2 billion for 80% means all the equity is 2.5 billion, so Caruna carries about 2.5 billion of net debt, half the EV. Grids carry that much because a regulator sets the return on their regulated asset base, the RAB. Revenue is a formula, not a forecast, which is why these trade on a multiple of RAB rather than EBITDA.

Recruiting Pulse

The Fed decides Wednesday. Have your 20 seconds ready. We flagged July 29 as live when the June minutes came out. It lands Wednesday. Consensus is a hold at 3.50 to 3.75%, but the market puts roughly one in four on a hike, and Governor Waller has talked about the committee's focus flipping toward inflation. You do not need a call. You need the level, the risk, and the transmission: a hike raises the cost of debt, compresses sponsor returns, and pushes IPO windows out.

Summer programs are ending, and return-offer calls are being made now. Most ten-week programs that started in early June wrap in the next two to three weeks, so the conversations deciding return offers are happening now, not at your final review. In a seat: stay reachable, close out what is open, and ask your staffer where you stand while you can still act on the answer. Not in one: every intern who does not convert reopens a full-time seat in the fall. Watch for those postings from late August.

Free newsletter

Want this in your inbox every Sunday?

Free. Five minutes. Built for college students who want the IB news that actually moves recruiting forward.

No spam. Unsubscribe in one click.

More Sunday Scaries

Vol. 12 · July 19, 2026

Sunday Scaries Vol. 12: Week of July 19, 2026

Vol. 11 · July 12, 2026

Sunday Scaries Vol. 11: Week of July 12, 2026

Vol. 10 · June 28, 2026

Sunday Scaries Vol. 10: Week of June 28, 2026

All Volumes Read the Blog