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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 two core businesses – Retail Banking & Services (comprised of Domestic Markets and International Financial Services) and Corporate & Institutional Banking.
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.
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.
‘Ace Manager - the Seventh Set’ in figures
The countries most highly represented in this year’s competition were: China (6,626 contestants – up 10% on last year); Morocco, whose students continue to show great enthusiasm (2,912 contestants), India (2,100 contestants), Italy (835 contestants), France (811 contestants), Turkey, which this year saw a strong increase (724 contestants), Spain (593 contestants), Hong Kong (467 contestants), United States (359 contestants) and Senegal (356 contestants).
The website – acemanager.bnpparibas.com – has registered a total of 374,159 visits, 178,132 of them by unique visitors, and 4.3 million page views, since it first went online on 20 October 2009
The Ace Manager Facebook page has over 37,000 fans
The Ace Manager Twitter account has 1,000  followers
Ace Manager has 1,500 followers on Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo
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.
BNP Paribas has a presence in 75 countries with more than 185,000 employees, including 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.