Does anyone know if there are ANY good investment banks in Paris (boutique banks included)? I will be here for the next couple of years..and I've done a bit of research...and there seems to be nothing good on the horizon...
I won't be shifting for awhile..let's just say that I plan on launching my "career" here...I really need some advice...I'm 21 and am completely lost...
I know there are IBanks in Paris. I know very little about banking as of yet, but that much I do know. Not sure how much is done in French, though, or anything about their recruitment processes, etc? Anyone?
I can tell you that the two biggest banks are Soc Gen and BNP - they are involved in pretty much every transaction, and the working language is resolutely French and you'll have to speak it fluently - oh and remember it's a terrible faux pas to ask what someone does for a living over there so watch out when you're networking!
Oh and the vast majority of people hired into front office positions have studied engineering.
To answer about recruiting in Paris, it is nothing like London or New York in terms of organization or regularity.
There are no analyst programs or anything like that. They usually recruit for individual positions as they need them or they come available. France is also very "clicky", so it is a major help to have connections. At the very minimum, going to one of the French business Grande Ecoles (HEC, ESCP, ESSEC, etc.) would be a near pre-req. for getting in the door. Often times, the finance professors at these schools are bankers who recruit from their classes.
To give you some insight into banking in Paris, the top students of the French undergrad business schools are heavily recruited in London and some even go to New York. (i.e. a lot of people don't stay in Paris)
First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for giving me such wonderful advice..it's really very kind of you.. So here's the deal..I know about how "prestigious" all these Grandes Ecoles are..I happen to study at the Sorbonne..which is wonderful...but the French actually spit on it..for them..the Grandes Ecoles are the places to be..I'm perfectly happy where I am..I speak fluent French because all my classes are in French...and I'm here because I have to be here (personal issues..I live alone..it's a long story)
Thanks for letting me know about the Ibanks in Paris..but you're right..the recruitment process is COMPLETELY different and very unorganized..I guess I'll just have to wing it...send unsolicited applications...follow up with phone calls...and make as many contacts as I can..now..how the hell does one make contacts?
Having lived in Paris the best investment banks in Paris are BNP Paribas, Rothschild, and Lazard.
Not that I would recommend this, but there smaller French banks who have some banking like Societe Generale and Credit Lyonnais.
Any of the US banks GS, ML, Lehman, etc. only maintain very small offices who focus exclusively on regional coverage. So there are not many positions and very few analysts.
Not sure of your background, but you will have to speak fluent French.
Launching a banking career in Paris is not a wise move in my opinion.
Salaries are lower and Paris ain't cheap. Your age may also be a discriminating factor.
If you want, give me some more specifics of your background and maybe I can say more.
If you are set on banking in Paris, BNP, Rothschild, and Lazard, but the latter 2 being private will be even more difficult to get into.
I guess there may be a boutique or two out there, but I don't know of any.
From a banking perspective, not sure why you would want to be in Paris when London is clearly the financial centre in Europe. Personally, however, I can totally understand why one would want to live in Paris. I was there last week on business and loved it.
The top French banking operations have been already been mentioned, but I want to emphasize that you'll definitely need to speak "French French" fluently in order to work there. I wouldn't advise going there thinking I am going to land an IB job having taken a few courses at university in French. I am fluent in "Canadian French" and was somewhat mocked by my pronounciation of certain words, and I've been going to French school since I was 6 years old. Unless French is your first language, I might reconsider.
I completely agree about the significance of French language skills mentioned above.
I also agree that for Euro banking, London is it, hands down.
The one area I disagree with (this is certainly more personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt) is how nice Paris is.
I visited Paris many times and loved it! I moved to Paris and loved it for about a month. I spent the remaining 2 years growing to hate it more with each passing day. I still like to visit for up to a week, but the culture is definitely different and not for everyone. (i.e. making fun of Quebecois or any non-native, even though they despise you if you don't speak French)
Many people do love it there though, so hopefully, you will be one of them.
Elaine, speaking from experience the above is pretty much spot on. If you're starting 2yr a MSc in Management at one of the 3 grandes ecoles mentioned above, you should be able to get into BNP/SocGen/calyon. To make Rothschild and Lazard (Paris office) if you're not at HEC your chances are very slim. Most of the people on these MSc programs aiming for IB end up on programs in London.
I have to disagree. I'm EM Lyon and beginning at Rothschild & Cie in july. At least I know there are some EM Lyon there (although they only recruit a dozen people per year so it might still be difficult to get in).
I also worked at BNP Paribas, and have to say I have seen 1 or 2 guys there who did not speak French. I suspect they had some good connections, but I would not recommend it to anyone, because even if more than half of the work is done in English, most clients and/or targets speak French, so you would be limited to very technical stuff (the good thing in Paris being that you get to see the clients and are in charge of more than just modelling quite early on).
Oh, and if you interview with Lazard or Rothschild, french cuffs are a plus (not that important either, of course)
Hehe, so many people say they'd love Paris wouln't it be for the Parisians!
Alex, you did an MSc or MBA in Paris area? If so, how useful has it been on the "street"?
By the way, in Paris IB a fair amount of client material is produced in English. It's presented in French though...
True that Sorbonne is probably more prestigious abroad than in France, but they still have some well respected courses.
There are a few people in Paris IB from Sorbonne DESS in finance for instance. Try contacting the professors and alumni.
Sending random applications is not a bad idea since there are not that many women in IB there. If you're decent looking and put your photo on the CV (as people do in France) that may well get you the 1st interview. From there it's about motivation and technical skills, but that's already a good step forward.
Also try to get the names of the staffers by asking any friends you have in the grandes ecoles. They will have brochures / job offers / alumi info with the names of the best people to contact.
wow..you know about their obsession with putting photographs on resumes :)
will do....I am decent looking and more importantly..am very hard working..but a good work ethic doesn't get you places anymore..does it? Sigh...
try applying to the london offices - much more organised and then transfer over to France, that's pretty easy to do usually....
Agree. Especially true for American banks with only a small team in France.
AlexandreT, well done for getting Rothschild. It's slightly more open in London but you'll see what I mean when you start in Paris.
Thanks for the congrats, but I am pretty sure I can bear the Parisians and their frenchness...because I am one myself (nobody's perfect) :p
And if by "open" you meant more opportunities, there's no doubt about it : after all as someone else said, it is Europe's true financial centre.
Well as someone posted on this thread and I'm working from Paris right now I thought I'd post some thoughts.
For some background I'm a rates trader usually working out of London but drafted into the Paris office to provide some temporary cover - the bank I work for is French so this is our main headquarters and it's much larger than the london office.
First of all good things about Paris:
Its small and easy to get around and you feel pretty safe everywhere - some exceptions of courese but safer than London certainly
It's cheap - massively so if u earn pounds like me
Good food is plentiful - and decent lunches are even subsidised by my company - 2/3 pounds foor a cooked mealm that's 4/6 dollars.
French girls are easily impressed by a foreign accent (when u speak some french......)
And the not so good:
French girls really aren't that good looking..... London wins hands down - or rather the girls in London
It's very French - this might sound like a stupid statement but in NYC and London you hear different languages walking around but here only French.....
There's a real racial divide - there's fairly open discrimination against people of african/arabic descent
If you're planning a career here then there's only one school to go to - the polytechnique - they're crazy about it to the extent that they look down on oxbridge/harvard MIT etc massively and all the top guys at French banks have gone there.
The French put a massive premium on maths so engineers/scientists/maths grads get first pick of the roles here, law is reasonably well appreciated and business is fairly actively looked down on - not that a lot of business grads aren't hired though.
In terms of trading the emphasis on maths means that in strucured and exotic products french banks are very competitive - leading the world in many fields due to the quality of quants coming through - and this spills over to other banks as they move on, you'll often see adverts for equity derivatives traders specifying a French speaking engineering student.
In terms of ibanking in France Soc Gen or BNP are involved in every deal - and you're right it's not a huge market but they dominate it though internationally they are not so good - with a couple of exceptions.
So hope this helps - I'm only here for 2 weeks and can't wait to get back to london!
I wouldn't say so for M&A : SG clearly isn't a top M&A advisor in France (but I grant you BNPP is).
Otherwise, I agree it is less mutlicultural, and that's certainly a shame.
was that SG were one of the top M and A advisors in France - certainly in the mittel-arcelor deal they were involved and gaz de france (I think) - not French though and not to au fait with the action over there
For Mittal Arcelor, I guess that almost all banks were working on it one way or another :p And SG sure is a player - but not top5 I would say.
I'll happily defer to u on this one ;-)
Alexandre: I agree with your comments, but by "open" I meant open to a wider variety of unis for recruitment.
BBand: I agree about "polytechnique" and all that, but your comments apply to capital markets. IB/CorpFin also like engineers but are usually ruled by and mainly recruit at the top french business schools. As for girls, if you don't like the french ones (I do!) there are also loads of easy americans around... No disrespect to the US ladies on this board of course. Have a look around and enjoy!
f*** the French. They're snobs .. their society and way of life will collapse .. and deserves to. Its just a matter of when.
The country's economy (not just banking) is based on entitlement not merit, and has been entirely dominated by the aristocracy for hundreds of years. Which is why you have virtually no chance if you don't go to the "ploytechnique". This also explains why FRENCH banks are by far the IB leaders in the country, despite not being able to compare with American/European BB's in terms of scale, talent etc. etc.
This is not the case in any other area in Europe.
They only speak French, and do look down on you if you don't (speak it PERFECTLY)- remind me why ? 500 years ago when they were a world power, and much of the "known" world spoke French, maybe some justification. Now, when their labor laws are so redundant as to make them a non-factor in the global economy, and the lower classes are so disenchanted as to be rioting on a mass scale in the streets, I see no justification for their snobbery.
Paradoxically, the French were also voted the worst tourists in the world in a recent poll of hoteliers, and one of the main reasons cited was their "refusal to speak the native language".
Paris itself is beautiful, but the people make the place .. and make it a shitty place.
This is bullshit. In IB the level of french required is very low...I know plently of foreign guys going to BNP m&a in Paris who are not french and had their interviews in English (and they are not top talents but middle of the class). French girls are definetly hot...absolutely not comparable to american and english cows
I worked at BNPP Paris, and although I did see 2 guys who did not speak French and could work witout problems (and I agree that not speaking English would be a much bigger problem), I was just saying that I feared it could sometimes be socially difficult for them as most (granted, not all) clients spoke French (even if most documents are produced in English, I guess it is important that your client relates to you etc.). However since most of the staff speaks French as well, they still have work to do, it's just that they can't work on just any task on any deal.
Very, very constructive. And the "f*** the French" statement definilty will help everyone understand what I-Banking in Paris is about. An unintersting topic anyway since the whole country will soon collapse, right?
"F*** the French" was my piece of flair buddy. I didn't say the country, I said the society and "way of life". I'm not going to argue this out .. your post was VERY constructive by the way. Commenting on my post, which you deemed to be unconstructive, really added quality content to the discussion.
To just point out what I said in my original post girls IN london not english girls - there are lots of hot french girls here - it's just I've not seen many in Paris - much better presented in general and the accent is hot.....
As for the language, guess what some French people are real snobs about it - in my experience it helps to make an effort but people are perfectly nice about not speaking French and generally appreciate the effort. As for people living in a country and not making an effort to learn the local language and customs well they deserve some abuse.....
People in Paris generally do, and will speak English - compare this to other cities like Madrid where if you don't speak spanish you're out of luck - no one will understand you!
As for the French being snobs - in a certain sort of way you're right but (with the pretty huge exception of the racial divide I mentioned) France is very meritcratic - their president is the son of a hungarian immigrant and you, to a lesser extend than other places, you earn your position in society rather than being born into it;m many of the traders I'm working with, some of them having integrated from poly, are not of French origins.
Quote: This also explains why FRENCH banks are by far the IB leaders in the country, despite not being able to compare with American/European BB's in terms of scale, talent etc. etc. /quote
First of all you'll find poly grads at every bbank - disproportionaltely so - and they're heavily recruited by everyone at the graduate level, remember a French education in maths/scientific discipline is much better than probably any other country (I mean this before university level) and it's normal to do at least two and sometimes more degrees.
How many other countries - outside of the US and the UK have substantial ibanks - and remember SG and BNP are world leaders in a number of areas within trading and structuring.
quote: Now, when their labor laws are so redundant as to make them a non-factor in the global economy, and the lower classes are so disenchanted as to be rioting on a mass scale in the streets, I see no justification for their snobbery. /quote
They're far from a non-factor and the population have just voted in change, they had a great social model but realise it can't work now; as for rioting on a mass scale on the streets don't believe everything you hear.
quote: Paradoxically, the French were also voted the worst tourists in the world in a recent poll of hoteliers, and one of the main reasons cited was their "refusal to speak the native language". /quote
hands up who cares what hoteliers think? and it's not unreasonable to expect hotel staff to speak French..... (amongst other languages)
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