BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas is a French bank and financial services company with global headquarters in Paris. It was formed through the merger of Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) and Paribas in 2000 and is one of the largest banks in the world. Based on 2012 information BNP Paribas was ranked as the third-largest bank in the world, as measured by total assets, by Bloomberg and Forbes. The firm is a universal bank split into three strategic business units: Retail Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking and Investment Solutions (which includes Asset Management, custodial banking, and real estate services). BNP Paribas’s four domestic markets are France, Italy, Belgium, and Luxembourg. It also has significant retail operations in the United States, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, and North Africa, as well as large-scale investment banking operations in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. BNP Paribas escaped the 2007’09 credit crisis relatively unscathed reporting a ‘3 billion net profit for the year of 2008, and ‘5.8 billion for 2009, both years boosted by profits from trading in its Corporate and Investment Banking division. In June 2014, BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion by US government for violating US sanctions, which was a record amount at that time.