Ahmedabad, Nov 18 (IANS) Fears of the global financial crisis affecting placements at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad have proven wrong with major recruiters from previous years reaffirming their commitment to select talent from the top business school, an IIM-A official said here Tuesday.”Recession has not affected us,” IIM-A placement committee (post-graduate programme) coordinator Rahul Luthra told mediapersons here.

Close to 300 PGP students are eligible for Summer Placements 2009, which kicked off Nov 13, due to a considerable increase in the batch size.

The first day saw the banking firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Rothschild and UBS among others making several international offers with attractive summer packages, according to IIM-A.

Among the consulting firms, Booz & Co, a first time recruiter in the summer process, made three offers - the highest for the firm across campuses.

McKinsey & Company had the highest number of acceptances across consulting firms with five students choosing to join them next summer.

The first day of placements saw over 80 offers being made to students and by the end of Slot Zero, around 115 students had been placed in a job of their choice and had opted out of the placement process.

“A company comes for summer placements for a short duration. It is not an indicator. I don’t think that we can take a call now. Five more months are left for the final placements,” said IIM-A director Samir Barua.

Luthra added: “The students work for two months in a world class firm. The summer camp is just an exploration to shape their careers.”

Despite the global financial crisis, finance saw the highest percentage of acceptances at 32 percent, Barua said. Consulting was second at 26 percent while marketing was the largest gainer from previous years with 23 percent of the batch choosing to opt for roles in that field.