Marie-Pascale Bonhomme visits Leysin

Marie-Pascale Bonhomme visited Leysin on Monday the 11th. It was a good visit.

Marie works for Amundi, an asset management firm owned by Credit Agricole and Societe General in France. They are worldwise company, specializing in the offering of investment products to local banks and large corporate and personal entities. They manage several billion dollars for some of Europe's most powerful companies and individuals, and they make solid money doing it.

Marie addressed the issues attending the asset management business, including risk management, diversification, corporate structure of Amundi, and Amundi's navigation of the Euro crisis.

I found Marie-Pascale to be a very intelligent and knowledgable leader in the field of asset management. I must say, however, that I do not find the field of asset management and investment banking to be of any interest at all to me. If anything, I learned that the world of asset management is simply not for me. For those who would be interested in an internship with Amundi, this visit could have been of extraordinary value, but for me, I didn't find the subject matter engaging, nor the presentation to be striking or interesting, despite the elite quality of the magnificent woman who was presenting to us and speaking to the class.

One thing that Marie-Pascale said outside of her presentation struck me as very intriguing. She mentioned that the banking and asset management industry is unique in the sense that rather than trying to kill competitors and put them entirely out of business, large banking and investment firms seek to become strong enough to swallow them up. The larger the bank, the less the risk of a massive run that can break the bank. Also, risk is much easier to predict when the client pool is much larger. The trends in corporate mergers and bank consolidation that came as a result of the recent banking crisis is a strong evidence of that. The wise banks ate up the stupid ones, and everyone's money was kept in tact - except that the now larger banks could gather a larger profit pool because of the larger clientele. That concept clicked for me in the meeting, and I was pleased for that.

Thanks to Marie for visiting us up in Leysin! It was terrific!