The FINANCIAL — 2048!, a team composed of three Chinese students from the University of Hong Kong, were declared winners of Ace Manager – the Seventh Set, the seventh annual edition of BNP Paribas’ annual online business game, following the final round on Friday 10 July.
The finals were contested by ten teams that had come through in the lead from the first and second stages of the online contest held in March and June. During these preliminary stages, teams consisting of three students tested their ability to perform various banking tasks on the basis of financial case studies linked to the BNP Paribas Group’s three core businesses – Retail Banking, Asset Management and Corporate and Investment Banking, according to BNP Paribas.
The finals took place at the BNP Paribas premises in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Moscow, Paris and Madrid. The ten teams were asked to meet one final challenge in front of a jury composed of BNP Paribas Group managers and internal experts. This final round consisted of two sections. In the early part of the day, the contestants worked on a financial case study connected with the Group’s business. During the afternoon, they were tasked to make a presentation on the new payment methods of tomorrow and explain how crowdfunding works.
The Winning Teams:
1. 2048!, consisting of three Chinese students enrolled at the University of Hong Kong
2. AAA, composed of three students – one Chinese, one Ukrainian and one Russian – all undertaking studies at the IE Business School.
3. Acer, consisting of three Chinese students following courses at Peking University in Beijing
4. Seeking Alpha v1, made up of one Moldovan and two Latvian students at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga
5. Numenoreans, composed of three Chinese students pursuing their education at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics
Prizes were awarded to the teams as follows: 1st place – €6,000 and a trip to Paris; 2nd place – €3,000; 3rd place – €1,500. Tickets for tennis events were presented to the 4th- and 5th- placed teams. In addition, for the second year running, BNP Paribas offered all the finalists a wide choice of internship opportunities abroad according to current needs in the Group’s three core business fields.
‘Ace Manager – the Seventh Set’ business game was designed by BNP Paribas in-house specialists as part of the Bank’s policy of raising the profile and enhancing the appeal of BNP Paribas among young people. The game has great value outside France, where the BNP Paribas brand is quite well known to a business clientele but less so among students. BNP Paribas has set itself the goal of becoming one of the most attractive employer brands among students worldwide.
The purpose of the Ace Manager contest is to highlight, in a games setting, the key role of the professional banker in financing customers’ plans and projects, in line with the situation in the real economy.
In order to help raise brand awareness and enhance its appeal to students at the best universities and colleges all over the world, the Bank has based the Ace Manager game on the world of tennis, a sport with which the BNP Paribas brand is already closely linked due the Group’s 40-year sponsorship of the game. The Bank is moreover well-placed to recruit and offer highly interesting career prospects to young talent. Today 68% of BNP Paribas staff and customers are located outside France and the Group constantly recruits people from all over the world with a diverse range of educational qualifications and personal backgrounds for its 300-plus job profiles.
Recruitment at BNP Paribas
Every year, BNP Paribas hires a large number of talented people. In 2015, the Bank is planning to recruit 2,000 permanent staff in France and also offers end-of-course internships to some 1,100 college students in France annually, plus more than 260 overseas internships. The Group strongly believes in the value of work-study programmes and will this year be taking on 1,850 new ‘sandwich course’/apprenticeship students at all levels of the Bank. BNP Paribas follows the basic principle of recruiting staff for the long term. Accordingly, the Group provides individual career management, with each employee receiving support and assistance from a dedicated HR team throughout his/her career, job moves and new directions. The Bank also runs highly specific employee development and skills training programmes. Given the wide variety of job profiles across the Group, many employees are able to build a career based on frequent job changes within a particular business line or department, between business lines/departments, and /or through moves to other geographical locations.
Discussion about this post