Area of work
Equity Derivatives Quantitative Research
Studied
BEng Computer Science, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; PhD Mathematical Finance, Warwick University
Joined
2008
Working in
London
It was two years ago that I first thought of pursuing a career in investment banking. I was previously considering academia, but then I thought that with investment banking I'd be able to see how my knowledge of theoretical finance translates into the actual world, to apply it to real examples.
I joined BNP Paribas because of their great quantitative reputation in Equities and Derivatives. If you want do this type of work, this really is the place to be. I first heard about BNP Paribas through a careers fair, where I had a great discussion with their representatives, which gave me the impetus to start looking into them. I soon found out how well regarded they were by the academia at my university. Then when I realised how many research papers in my area of speciality were written by current BNP Paribas employees, I knew I wanted to work here.
I did an internship at BNP Paribas in 2007, between June and September. During this time I was given a real job and real responsibilities and I developed actual models which are now in the process of being tested for possible use within BNP Paribas. I'm now working full time here and the main part of my role will be to design models and then back test them to ensure their accuracy and reliability. I was also finishing off my PhD at the same time; it's about modelling the co-movement of different financial variables. I've designed the theoretical aspects of a new model which is attempting to be a more accurate and detailed way of tracking and predicting the movements of different assets; for instance the way the Yen, the Euro and the dollar move together. It tries to take the predictive aspect further than seeing simply linear relationships between different variables.
My internship was in the middle of the credit crunch and it has been interesting for me to see how our cutting-edge pricing technology and risk control is helping us during this difficult time. I think I'm headed for a great future here.
