Sciences Po students unanimously ranked first

Sciences Po is delighted and proud to announce that five of its Finance and Strategy Master’s degree program students were unanimously ranked first at the 2nd edition of Société Générale’s M&A Corporate Finance Competition.

Ahmad El Saadi, Caroline Langlumé, Maxence Jaboulet-Vercherre, Léopold Matarrese and Nabilla Koukouch competed with students from top-tier business schools including HEC Paris, ESSEC, ESCP Europe, EMLyon, EDHEC Business School and Université Paris Dauphine.

Among the initial 40 contending teams, seven were selected to represent their schools at the final round which took place on Monday 27 November at Société Générale’s global headquarters. Our students pitched a cross-border takeover bid on a retail company to a board of Global Heads and Managing Directors at Société Générale, providing a rigorous and accurate analysis of the target, including a company valuation and estimation of potential synergies, as well as a market analysis and mapping of potential buyers.

>Cyril Paolantoni, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Consumer Retail Luxury, expressed his joy in welcoming teams from the 7 most prestigious French business schools: "2019 was the second year of the Gaming Inter Ecole by Société Générale. Once again, we were very happy to give the students of the top 7 business schools in France the opportunity to put a strong foothold in the business life. We believe this M&A case to present to a professional jury of investment bankers is a nice way to complete a corporate finance training before joining a bank. This year, we have been positively surprised by the quality of the teams, both for the content of their analysis and the way they presented their output. Most of the students understood that theoretical analysis are necessary but not enough to catch a prestigious M&A mandate, especially in a world of fierce competition among advisory offices. They proved to be skilled, precise and especially impactful to convince their future client to counter-bid. The Sciences Po team demonstrated a superior level of professionalism and was unanimously ranked first by the jury! Congratulations to the winning team and we hope we confirmed your appetite to start a brilliant career in investment banking…”