Jane Street Capital The firm paying interns more than Keir Starmer

Sitting down for his internship interview at Jane Street Capital in the summer of 2013, the future crypto-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried found himself presented with a stack of poker chips and playing cards. But this was no ordinary game.

- Kalyeena Makortoff

Jane Street traders, renowned for their financial trading prowess, revealed an evolving list of quirky rules peppered with intriguing side-bets as they started to vet the potential recruit.

The aim? To test whether Bankman-Fried had the problemsolving chops to join the secretive high-speed trading firm that would eventually rival Wall Street behemoths such as Goldman Sachs. The future FTX boss got the internship, was hired full-time and reportedly paid $300,000 (£229,000) in his first year.

Jane Street, which famously tries to avoid the limelight, made headlines last week when it emerged that the firm was advertising New York internships that came with a whopping $250,000 salary.

At that rate, Jane Street's next crop of interns - particularly those involved in quantitative research and engineering - will earn more than the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who is paid about £167,000 a year, and the head of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, who takes home $203,500.

And that is while enjoying a day of breakfast and lunch buffets, mentorship meetings and lectures on anything from coding, to mock trades and, of course, poker.