This year again BNP Paribas has partnered with BlackRock on the ‘Big City Bright Future’ initiative. Amongst others, the two businesses have welcomed young students for a 2 weeks internship in their Paris offices. Previous to this, the interns travelled to London where they spent a week at King’s College as part of the programme.
For many young adults, the business world and especially the financial industry can be attractive yet daunting because of its technical and complex characteristics. ‘Big City Bright Future’ aims at breaking the barriers between the future generation coming from different backgrounds and the world of finance. By welcoming these young talents into their offices through the programme and showing them how the life of a trader or a sales looks from up close, financial institutions hope to change the bias. And as a bonus, it gives a great opportunity to ambitious and curious students to discover a career they may not have been considering.
We are delighted to partner with BNP Paribas again around the Big City Bright Future initiative, allowing us to deliver the programme to many more students. This programme not only offers a fantastic opportunity for students of different backgrounds to learn about the financial world, but it also benefits our companies through fresh insights provided by the trainees.
Pierre Sarrau, Chief Investment Officer for Multi-Asset Strategies at BlackRock
This is the third year that BNP Paribas participates in this programme and once again, employees are thrilled and excited to meet with the younger generation, seeing this as an opportunity to share their passion and inspire the future of our industry. Through shadowing, students can truly get a view of what a job on the trading floor entails.
If students shared their apprehensions before the internship started, they were certainly positively surprised to discover a world that they had only heard about on TV, in the movies or books. They explained that their vision of the financial markets drastically changed after seeing it from close and most of them shared their desire to one day work in banking.
When I was offered the opportunity to do an internship at BNP Paribas, I was excited but also nervous as I had very little idea of what an investment bank actually did. This experience definitely opened my eyes on a whole new world, which I find really interesting and is something that I could see myself pursue in my career.
Salam Hyjazi (18), Licence 1 in Economy at Université Paris Panthéon Sorbonne
For BNP Paribas, it is clear that opening the doors to their trading floor to the younger generation is a key aspect of shaping the future. By doing so, the bank shows its commitment in shaping the future. A future that represents society with all differences; with bright, curious and motivated people as its most important resource no matter the background.
People is our most valuable resource and we do invest in it. Over the past few weeks, witnessing these young people learning, asking questions and essentially discovering a new world that is banking was fascinating and their curiosity heart-warming. Talents that will join us tomorrow will be the ones shaping the bank of the future.
Barbara Levéel, Global Head of Human Resources, Global Markets BNP Paribas
Moreover, this initiative demonstrates the partnership between the bank for a changing world and the world’s biggest asset manager. The two companies take on the opportunity to welcome French students to provide them with valuable work experience that can help them gain financial literacy. If BNP Paribas and BlackRock have a long-standing business relationship, they also clearly have common values to bring out people’s potential and they continue to partner on this important social goal.
I’m delighted that our strong business relationship with BlackRock and our common values and vision for the future have enabled us over the years to collaborate around a bigger purpose: educating and elevating future leaders.
Beat von Gunten, Deputy Global Head of Institutional Sales and Head of Institutional Sales EMEA, Global Markets BNP Paribas