The trend suggests that for senior finance positions a small core of leading universities has increased its advantage over the rest.

Banks that previously actively hired from most of the Russell Group of 20 institutions have narrowed their search this year to as little as one, university officials say. Banks do not have to cast their net so widely because they have smaller recruitment targets, though the number of would-be bankers remains high.

“There is now more gathering than hunting among the banks,” says Gordon Chesterman, director of Cambridge University Careers Service. Banks' recruitment? of students was about 50 per cent down last year, he estimates, and a number of banks pulled out of the university's October banking recruitment event, although he declines to give names.