Tiberius Benaissa, a rising senior at the Gabelli School of Business. Photo by Patrick Verel
This summer, rising senior Tiberius Benaissa is interning in the New York City offices of BNP Paribas, a Paris-based bank that is one of the largest in Europe.
Benaissa, a finance major at the Gabelli School with a concentration in global business, was born in Paris and moved to Dubai when he was 9 years old. His family moved to New York City during his junior year in high school, and when it came time for college, he chose to stay in the Big Apple and attend Fordham at the Rose Hill campus.
“I've loved the opportunities that Fordham has given me to excel, not only in the classroom but also in the clubs and academic support. I wouldn't have gotten the skills needed to get this internship without the support of the administration.”
Q: How did you get this internship with BNP Paribas?
A: I got it through a program called Finance Scholars, which is reserved for the top 40 finance students at Fordham. We networked with employees from a number of banks last year at events ranging from Q&A sessions to a talk from the head of the Bank of America. One of those events was with BNP, and I was able to connect with someone in HR. I got my offer in June of that year, and I started the internship this June.
Q: What kind of work are you doing there?
A: My primary purpose is to lend support to the analysts and the associates. In my group, I work in equity capital markets, which is very involved in the origination of initial public offerings. So whatever pitch my team may have coming up, I'll do whatever needs to be done to help make it a success.
Q: What does it mean when you say your team is preparing a pitch?
A: Let's say, for argument's sake, that Warren Buffet holds billions of dollars of Apple shares. We might tell him, ‘You're a little concentrated in Apple, and we think you should take some of those Apple shares and sell them to the market.’ If the pitch is successful and he says yes, BNP would then facilitate what's called a block trade because he can't dump all of his shares into the open market at once.
Q: How has Fordham prepared you for this internship?
A: One thing that I would point to is the support of Cynthia Bush, the director of career advising for undergraduate programs. She oversees the finance scholars and has done a fantastic job of organizing talks and opportunities to network with banking professionals. I’m also grateful for Fordham’s Consulting Cup Challenge, which I participated in my sophomore year. It gave me a base from which I could begin to truly understand the language of business—accounting and the basics of finance. I got to work in a team, and I learned a lot about becoming organized and having the right framework to learn in a business school. That's a completely overlooked skill.
Q: You’ve said you want to move back to Paris. How might this internship help?
A: In this job, it is very common to move laterally through an organization and often to different countries. BNP is great because it offers that kind of movement, especially when it comes to positions in France.