The “Vita” team, maked up of 3 students coming from China, emerged as winners of the final round of ‘Ace Manager – The Sixth Set’, the sixth annual international online business game for students run by BNP Paribas.
The final saw five teams, which had come out on top in the first phase, taking place online between 17 April and 7 May, go head-to-head for the title. During the initial phase, competing teams of three students were asked to test their ability to perform a variety of banking-related jobs based on a number of financial case studies linked to the BNP Paribas Group’s three core business areas: Retail Banking, Asset Management and Corporate & Investment Banking. The teams were set the task of finding the best solution to assist clients looking to develop their business.
The finals took place in parallel at the premises of BNP Paribas Shanghai, Beijing and Madrid. Ramiro Mato, Country Manager for Spain and Laurent Couraudon, Manager for China, were in attendance to congratulate the top teams in this international competition. During the day, the five finalist teams were asked to complete a final task in front of a jury composed of subject specialists and management of the BNP Paribas Group. The final was run in two separate phases. During the first part of the day, the contestants worked on a financial case study impinging on the Group’s three core business areas. In the afternoon they were called upon to ‘reinvent’ the customer relationship and come up with innovative products and services.
The winners:
1. Vita, a team composed of three students from China, undertaking studies at Peking University and University of Chicago
2. Adjusted, a team composed of three students from Italy, Germany and France, undertaking studies at IE Business School.
3. Wahoo, a team composed of two students from China and one student from Italy, undertaking studies at University of Virginia, Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
4. Glory36, a team composed of three students from China, undertaking studies at Peking University
5. DongFeng, a team composed of two students from China and one student from Slovakia, undertaking studies at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Each of the finalists was awarded a prize. The top three teams received €6,000 plus a trip to Paris, €3,000, and €1,500 respectively. All final contestants will also receive tickets for tennis events. In addition, for the second consecutive year, BNP Paribas offered all the finalists the choice of a broad range of international internships to work in one or more of the Group’s three core business areas.
The ‘Ace Manager - The Sixth Set’ business game was designed by BNP Paribas in-house specialists. In line with the Group’s overall growth strategy, this annual contest is part of the Bank’s policy of raising the profile of BNP Paribas among young people. The game has special attraction outside France, where the BNP Paribas brand is quite well known to a business clientele but less so among younger people. 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 assisting clients looking to finance their plans and projects, and thus helping to drive 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 with a diverse range of educational qualifications and personal backgrounds for its 300-plus job profiles.
‘Ace Manager - The Sixth Set’ in figures
- 21,200 contestants
- 136 countries represented
The countries most highly represented in the game were: China (6,048 contestants); Morocco, which made a leap forward this year (3,684 contestants), India (2,220 contestants), France (1,350 contestants), Italy (1,026 contestants), Spain (636 contestants), Hong Kong (506 contestants), UK (464 participants), Belgium (450 participants), USA (426 contestants). Last year, the ‘Fifth Set’ attracted close to 19,000 contestants from 140 countries.
- The www.acemanager.bnpparibas.com (unavailable link) website received a total of 374,159 visits, including 178,132 unique visitors, since it first went online on 20 October 2009, with 4.3 million pages views to date
- Close to 36,000 fans on the Ace Manager Facebook page
- 750 Twitter followers
- 600 followers on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo
BNP Paribas works in close collaboration with the TBWA\Corporate agency on this global-scale project, which enables students all over the world to improve their understanding of finance, marketing and business strategy as they come into contact with highly informative content at every stage of the Ace Manager game.
This year Ace Manager has won two major awards in France: the Gold Award in the Recruitment category of the TOP COM Corporate Communication Grand Prix, and the Bronze Award 2014 for ‘HR Creativity’ at the Employer Brand awards.
Recruitment at BNP Paribas
Every year, BNP Paribas hires a large number of talented people. In 2014, the Group is planning to recruit close to 18,000 permanent staff all over the world, 1,300 of these in France. As part of its pre-recruitment policy, BNP Paribas also provides end-of-course internships to 1,100 college students in France, plus more than 260 overseas internships. The Group strongly believes in the value of work-study programmes and will this year be taking on 1,750 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 specific employee development and advanced skills 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 moves to other geographical locations.
BNP Paribas has a presence in 75 countries with more than 180,000 employees, including more than 140,000 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-Pacific.
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