Paul Simonin

Education: Bachelors, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), South Korea; graduated in 2026

Subject: Global Business Administration with a minor in Finance

Sector(s) of interest: Alternative Investments

My greatest challenge when I applied to business school: Translating an unconventional profile, e-sports leadership and a dual-degree in Korea into a narrative admissions committees could immediately see the value of.

About me: I managed an e-sports team before I was old enough to open a brokerage account. It was decent training, as it turns out – you learn to price talent, size risk and stay calm when the screen goes red.

I’m French and I joined the MFA programme at London Business School after a dual- degree between emlyon business school in Lyon, France, and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, South Korea. At SKKU, I founded SWIFT, the university’s first international finance society.

Since then, I’ve worked at AXA Investment Managers on pan-European real estate equity funds, and at BlackRock in Paris as a client and product summer analyst, covering iShares ETF distribution and product strategy.

What I enjoy most is looking for mispricing where nobody else is looking. My undergraduate thesis tested contrarian strategies on retail sentiment data across the S&P 500. My MFA thesis is stranger still, applying asset pricing frameworks to the Counter-Strike skin market, some 32 million observations of a market nobody has bothered to model properly.

After the MFA programme, I’m heading toward fundamental equity research and long/short investing. If you’re considering London Business School, I’m happy to talk about the MFA programme, life in London, or why your video game inventory might be an asset class.

Three topics I can be approached about: Applying to London Business School with an unconventional profile; quant/asset management recruiting; building a society from scratch in a new environment.

Email: psimonin.mfa2027@london.edu