2005 Sustainable development report

BNP Paribas: In search of new experiences and exchanges

As an international group offering a startling array of diversity, BNP Paribas shuns the trend towards artificial uniformity. Operating on five continents, it brings together complementary, but widely different businesses, and stands as the uniting force for its subsidiaries, which align their own identity with the groupwide corporate culture.

Our vigorous commitment to strong ethical and social values ensures that progress goes hand-in-hand with a respect for diversity. This corporate ethos has helped to make BNP Paribas the global success story we know today.

The Group's leadership has been bolstered by increased experience and knowledgesharing across the employee spectrum. This impulse naturally forms the guiding thread to this year's Sustainable Development Report, in which we have showcased 10 examples taken from the everyday fabric of the Bank's operations.

Sharing experience is the driving force behind the WIN programme (p.111), bringing together new graduate employees working in different businesses from across the four corners of the globe.

The unprecedented in-branch recruitment drive (p.29) also represents an exchange dynamics initiative between the Bank's branches and its human capital.

There are some markets in which you cannot do business - let alone vie for leadership - unless you bring together a broad range of expertise, across several continents. This was certainly the case for the wind power financing project in Gangwon, South Korea (p.94).

A company's development and success abroad also depend on adapting to the cultural idiosyncrasies of each country. That lesson has not been lost on BancWest with Pacific Rim (p.56), on TEB, which launched a Turkish desk in Algeria (p.49), or on BICI-GUI, which gave its backing to a micro-lending project in Guinea (p.16).

Being sensitive to difference and diversity means developing facilities that are accessible to disabled persons, such as ATMs for the visually impaired (p.8), as well as addressing issues of youth employment and social inclusion, as espoused by the AFEV (p.64) and the association, Fête le mur (p.72).