The final placements at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad came to an end after eight gruelling days, with all the 259 students of the Post Graduate Diploma program being placed.

Proving wrong the initial apprehensions, the placement process went off smoothly, said Prof Samir Barua, Director.

The finance sector saw a decline in number of jobs offered, but still hired more than 100 students

Consulting came a close second and hired around 24 per cent of the students, while marketing picked up 3 per cent as compared with eight per cent last year.

Though the highest salary offered crossed the Rs 1-crore-mark, the average salary declined by 25 per cent to Rs 12.17 lakh for domestic postings and $83,000 for international postings.

While Bain & Co and McKinsey & Co picked up eight students each, Boston Consulting Group and TAS picked seven each.

Other companies included first time recruiter Frost & Sullivan, Unicon Securities, Alcatel Lucent, Aditya Birla Group and ICRA, SEBI, BPCL and STCI.