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Ace Manager 4 - The Passing Shot” team wins fourth annual round of BNP Paribas online business contest

“Kinetic”, a team from Singapore emerged as winners at the grandfinal on Wednesday 18 April of Ace Manager – The Fourth Set, the fourth annual round of the BNP Paribas online business game.

At the grand final's in Paris, five teams competed for the 2012 Ace Manager title. These five teams had emerged as finalists following the preliminary online contest, which took place between 20 February and 20 March.

The final five teams, each made up of three students, were set a dual challenge, with the opportunity to impress a jury composed of the President of the University of Paris Dauphine and senior managers from the BNP Paribas Group(1). In the morning, the fifteen contestants worked on a Financial case study linked to the Group's three major business fields – Retail Banking; Corporate & Investment Banking; and Investment Solutions (asset management). In the afternoon, they were asked to imagine the ‘bank of tomorrow' and present their vision of how the banking profession will have evolved in five years' time.

The prize-giving ceremony, held at the Group's Offices in Paris, was presided over by François Villeroy de Galhau, Chief Operating Officer of the BNP Paribas Group.

The final ranking order was as follows:

1. Kinetic , composed of three students from Singapore, pursuing studies in National Univesity of Singapore.
2. Olivbergen, composed of three students from Sweden, pursuing studies in Stockholm School of Economics.
3. 75/25, composed of three students from the Ukraine, pursuing studies in Kviv School of Economics.
4. Fusion and SW&P, 2 Russian teams tied for 4th place. Each team was composed of three students, coming from « Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation » and « Higher School of Economics » respectively.

Ace Manager – The Fourth Set this year attracted over 14,205 contestants from145 countries.

The top three teams were awarded €9,000, €3,000 and €1,500 respectively and all fifteen contestants received tickets for tennis events. In addition, for the second year running, BNP Paribas offered each of the finalists a wide choice of international internships in the Group's three business divisions.

Ace Manager - The Fourth Set was designed by a team of BNP Paribas experts. The contest is part of BNP Paribas' overall strategy for enhancing brand recognition and employer-brand appeal among students. The competition is particularly useful for this purpose outside France. While the Group brand is extremely well-known among corporate clients in a number of countries, it is less well-known among students. BNP Paribas has therefore set itself the target of becoming one of the most attractive employer-brands among students worldwide.

The competition sets out to highlight, in the form of a serious game, the central role of the professional banker in financing clients' projects, in full accordance with economic realities.

To help enhance brand recognition and increase the Group's appeal to students from top universities and colleges all over the world, BNP Paribas chose to base the Ace Manager contest on the world of tennis, a sport with which the Group already has strong links through its worldwide sponsorship of the game for almost 40 years. Moreover, the Bank is well-placed to offer exciting career prospects to new recruits. Today some 68% of all Group customers and staff are located outside France, and BNP Paribas is constantly looking to recruit talented people from highly diverse backgrounds all over the world for a range of over 300 different job-types.

Ace Manager – The Fourth Set in figures

14,205 contestants

145 countries represented
Countries with the highest representation were: lndia (2,812 contestants), Italy (2,112 contestants), France (799 contestants), Turkey (694 contestants), the UK (685 contestants), Singapore (523 contestants), Indonesia (513 contestants), Ukraine (495 contestants), Russia (484 contestants) and Poland (469 contestants). Last year, the third annual round of the contest attracted some 12,832 contestants, from 140 countries.

The contest website - www.acemanager.bnpparibas.com – has received a total of a 374,159 visits, including 178,132 unique hits, with over 4.3 million pages viewed, since its launch on 20 October 2009.
20,911 fans of the Ace Manager Facebook page
635 Twitter followers


BNP Paribas works in close collaboration with the TBWA\Corporate agency on this high-profile international competition.


Careers at BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas hires a large number of talented new colleagues each year. In 2012, the Group is planning to recruit around 13,000 new staff worldwide, including 1,500 to 2,000 people in France. As part of our pre-recruitment process, BNP Paribas also offers more than 1,100 internships per year in France to students approaching the end of their course.
A key recruitment principle at BNP Paribas is long-term career development. Staff benefit from individual career management counselling with the support of dedicated teams who are there to assist every employee with his or her career path, job moves and/or new directions. The Group also has highly effective talent development and skills development programmes in place.
As BNP Paribas engages in a wide variety of business activities, there are numerous opportunities to build a career at the Group, with regular job moves within a given business, from one business area to another, or by moving between geographical locations. For more information, have a look at the websites listed below:

https://www.recrutement.bnpparibas.com/
https://backstage.bnpparibas.com/
https://careers.bnpparibas.com/
About BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas (www.bnpparibas.com) has a presence in 80 countries with nearly 200,000 employees, including more than 150,000 in Europe. It ranks highly in its three core activities: Retail Banking, Investment Solutions and Corporate & Investment Banking. In Europe, the Group has four domestic markets (Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg) and BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the leader in consumer lending.
BNP Paribas is rolling out its integrated retail banking model across Mediterranean basin countries, in Turkey, in Eastern Europe and a large network in the western part of the United States. In its Corporate & Investment Banking and Investment Solutions activities, BNP Paribas also enjoys top positions in Europe, a strong presence in the Americas and solid and fast-growing businesses in Asia.




(1) Laurent Batsch, President of the University of Paris Dauphine
Muriel Atias, Corporate and Investment Banking, Corporate Finance
Olga Semenenko, Brand Manager, Europe Mediterranean
Virginie Fauvel, Head of Online Banking
Laurence Pessez, Member of the Corporate Social Responsibility
Jean-Francois Boutringain, COO for the Group Brand, Communications and Quality .