2026 Five Arrows Direct Lending Long Term Internship - London

This is a London-based six-month internship with Five Arrows Direct Lending. The posting's own header gives the division as Five Arrows, the programme as 'Long Term Internship' and the duration as six months. Five Arrows Direct Lending provides customised senior and subordinated debt financing to privately-owned businesses across the European mid-market, ranging from unitranche, second lien and mezzanine debt to PIK notes, preferred equity and minority common equity, and focuses on three core sectors: Healthcare and Education; Software, Data and IT Services; and Business and Financial Services. It invests from its fourth-generation fund, Five Arrows Debt Partners IV, with 2.4 billion euros of committed capital, and the team is 18 investment professionals across London, Paris and New York. Source

The two words that matter are 'Direct Lending'. You are on the credit side, not the equity side: the question on every deal is whether the business can service its debt through a bad year, not how much upside there is, and the document you help write is a credit memo for an investment committee. 'Long Term Internship' is Rothschild's own name for a six-month off-cycle seat, so despite the summer-internship tag our taxonomy has put on this row, it is not a summer programme and it will take you out of university for two terms.

Our record carries no team for this row, but the posting is specific: Five Arrows Direct Lending, a team of 18 investment professionals across London, Paris and New York. That is the number to hold on to. The London slice of 18 is a handful of people, there is no intern class and no rotation, and the two or three investors who happen to be running live deals in your six months will decide what you learn. Ask how many of the 18 sit in London and which sectors they are covering before you accept.

The posting says you would be a fully integrated member of the investment team with exposure to all stages of the investment process: in-depth industry and company due diligence on targets' historical performance and future prospects, developing and maintaining customised financial models, coordinating due diligence and transaction processes internally and with external advisers, forming a view on the credit quality of potential investments, preparing detailed memos for the investment committee, assisting on deal execution and monitoring existing portfolio companies. Source

Five Arrows is the alternative assets arm of Rothschild & Co and manages around 30 billion euros of assets across private debt, public debt and private equity strategies. Source

321 people have held London roles at Rothschild & Co as a whole since 2018.

82 people have held London roles in Rothschild & Co's M&A team since 2018, and 74 in Global Advisory. Almost everything the record shows on this firm in London is the advisory bank rather than the funds arm, which is worth knowing before you go looking for someone to ask about Five Arrows: most Rothschild alumni you find will have sat on the bank side and will not know this business.

The row is labelled 2026 and it is now September 2026. A six-month seat carrying last year's label has either already started or already gone. Nothing on the page says applications are closed and we will not claim they are, but treat this as a record of the last cycle rather than a live application, and spend your time finding the equivalent listing for the next intake on the same careers site.

The useful thing this row tells you is that the programme exists and has a name. Five Arrows runs long-term internships as a repeating format across its strategies, so the next Direct Lending listing will look like this one and will appear on Rothschild's own students and graduates pages. Watch that page directly rather than waiting for an aggregator: a fund of 18 people fills one intern seat long before a job board notices.

The posting says the internship is designed for people who are intellectually curious, analytical and motivated to learn, that applications are welcome from candidates across all academic disciplines, and that prior experience in finance is not required. The only listed qualification is an outstanding academic track record. What it does ask for is a good understanding of financial statements, meaning the profit and loss account, cash flow statement and balance sheet, an understanding of the fundamental principles of corporate finance, advanced Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and the ability to build long-term professional relationships with management teams, private equity sponsors and advisers. No degree year, no graduation window, no minimum grade and no right-to-work condition is published anywhere on the page. Source

'Prior experience in finance is not required' and 'all academic disciplines' are unusual lines for a credit fund, and they are the most valuable sentences on the page. The filter here is your academic record plus evidence that you can reason about a business, which means a non-finance student with a strong degree has a real route in. What you cannot skip is the accounts: you are being asked to judge whether a company can pay its debts, so know how the three statements connect before the first interview.