The “Insight” team, made up of 3 Ukrainian students coming from the National Taras Shevchenko University, emerged as winners of the final round of ‘Ace Manager – The Eight Set’, the Eighth annual international online business game for students run by BNP Paribas.
The final saw 10 teams, which had come out on top from the first phase, taking place in 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 related with the BNP Paribas Group’s core business areas: Retail Banking, Asset Management and Corporate & Institutional Banking.
The final took place in parallel at the offices of BNP Paribas Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Moscow, Kiev, Paris and London. During the day, the ten finalist teams were asked to complete a final task in front of a jury composed of subject specialists and managers of BNP Paribas. 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 core business areas. In the afternoon the teams were set the task to present the vision of future banking integrated with Fintech and digitalization.
The winners:
1. Insight, a team consisting of three Ukrainian students enrolled at the National Taras Shevchenko University.
2. Team China, a team composed of three Chinese students all studying at the Tsinghua University.
3. Thetago, a team consisting of three Chinese students following courses at ESSEC Business School in Paris.
4. China Team, a team made up of three students - one from Indonesia and two from China who enrolled at the Tsinghua University.
5. LBS Acers, a team of three Chinese students pursuing studies at London Business School.
The top three teams will receive €6,000 plus a trip to Paris, €3,000, and €1,500 respectively. All teams will receive tickets for tennis events. In addition, for three consecutive years, BNP Paribas has offered all the finalists a broad range of international internship opportunities in one or more of the Group’s two core business areas.
The ‘Ace Manager - The eighth 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 competition is to highlight, in the setting of a game, 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 Eighth Set’ in figures
- Around 12,000 contestants
- 124 countries represented. The countries most highly represented in the game were: China (5130 contestants), Morocco (1012 contestants), India (930 contestants), France (496 contestants), Turkey (422), Senegal (413 participants), Spain (354 contestants), Hong Kong (333 contestants), Singapore (307) and the UK (232).
- More than 39 900 fans on the Ace Manager Facebook page
- 1000 Twitter followers
- 2225 followers on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo
Recruitment at BNP Paribas
Every year, BNP Paribas hires a large number of talented people. The Group is planning to hire 20,000 new permanent employees (3,000 in France) in 2016, while also offering more than 260 overseas internships throughout the world and end-of-course internships to some 1,100 college students in France. The Group strongly believes in the value of work-study programmes and will be taking on 2000 new ‘sandwich course’/apprenticeship students this year 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.
BNP Paribas has a presence in 75 countries with more than 185,000 employees, including almost 145,000 in Europe. It ranks highly in its two core activities: Retail Banking & Services (comprised of Domestic Markets and International Financial Services) and Corporate & Institutional 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 & Institutional Banking and International Financial Services activities, BNP Paribas also enjoys top positions in Europe, a strong presence in the Americas and solid and fast-growing businesses in Asia-Pacific.