As people have mentioned, it’s not a great year to have received an offer – either as an intern or as a full time 2012 hire – from RBS.

The bank is making 3,500 redundancies and reducing its investment banking headcount 50% from the peak in 2009. It’s exiting cash equities, it’s exiting corporate broking (which may be purchased by Jefferies) and it’s exiting equity capital markets and M&A.

So what happens if you’re a student who’s supposed to be joining RBS in one of these areas?

RBS didn’t return a request for official comment. Unofficially, however, we understand every effort is being made to accommodate students who’re supposed to be joining in equities etc in other business areas. “If possible, we’re trying to house them elsewhere,” explains one RBS employee. This may mean graduates who thought they were joining in equities will find themselves in operations.

University careers services say RBS is still interviewing for graduate positions in its investment bank and that students are being encouraged to attend the interviews. “We’ve got a couple of people interviewing at RBS this week and are saying they should go ahead. It’s only one part of their organization that’s affected,” says a careers consultant at a London school.

At this stage, 2012 graduates planning to join RBS this summer may have few other options. However, we understand that several of this year’s summer interns have had second thoughts and told RBS they won’t be coming after all. Rival banks deny that they’re targeting RBS’s interns for themselves: “It would be very unusual that we would target people from RBS,” says the head of graduate recruitment at a Swiss bank inLondon. “They’re not the top pool of graduate hires.”