Game, Set, and Match: Bocconians Ace it in Paris
At the second the try, the Bocconi team won ACE Manager, the online business game organized by BNP Paribas. Alberto Polo, Antonio Sgobba e Lorenzo Pasquale Longo beat the other four finalists, the student teams from Russia, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, after surviving the elimination round where 2,707 teams took part from all over the world.
Pushed by the desire to improve on their last year's third place finish (an achievement in itself), they fought the competition of other 8,133 students armed of business plans and commercial strategies.
In spite of the difficulties of communicating by e-mail and Skype with Alberto (a third-year student in Degree of Economics and Social Sciences) who's doing an exchange program at Wharton, the team made it to the final four, thereby earning the opportunity to fly to Paris for the finals, in BNP's HQ, to seek the victory that had eluded them in 2009.
The final challenge was gruelling: briefing at 8:00am and three business cases to be dealt with in eight hours. The cases where linked to the areas of activity of BNP Paribas and to the world of tennis, which the French bank actively sponsors.
In retail banking, the brief was to create a new subsidiary, in corporate and investment banking to prepare the IPO of a company created by a fictive retired tennis champion named John Mackenzie, and, finally, in the area of investment solutions teams has to develop investment strategies for 'Tennis for life', one of the bank's foundations.
"From last year's experience we had learned that in addition to the solutions proposed, presentation was key," explains Lorenzo, just like Antonio a third-year student in the Degree of Economics and Finance. "So we approached the theory as if it were a client. The jury's president said we were very 'Italian', meaning we were brilliant and persuasive."
"The work was really hard: we had to provide many answers which required a broad range of skills," says Antonio. "In finance, we were super-prepared, in marketing we had to improvise a bit...".
The day ended with the award ceremony held at Musée de l'Orangerie, with the €9,000 prize handed to the winners by BNP president Michel Pebereau, followed by a cocktail party with the bank's top managers. It was also an occasion from some networking: the head of investment banking seemed to be particularly appreciative of the job done by the Bocconi team.
Fond memories of gala dinners on the bateau mouche gliding on the Seine won't be enough to make the guys run for next year's edition of the tournament. "They were astonished we could make it to the finals once again. Now we'd better retire as winners!" concludes Lorenzo.