Mathis HOUROU, Author at SimTrade blog

Financial Consolidation Step by Step: What I Learned as an Intern at Evernex

October 15, 2026October 15, 2026 by Mathis HOUROU

In this article, Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA), 2022-2026) shares his experience as a consolidation intern at Evernex. He explains how a group builds its consolidated accounts, step by step.

About the company

Evernex is a global provider of third-party maintenance (TPM) for data center equipment. It maintains and repairs servers, storage and network devices, but it is not their manufacturer. Clients keep their hardware running for longer and pay less than with the support of the manufacturer. The company is based in Paris.

Logo of Evernex.

Source: Evernex.

Evernex also manages spare parts, recycles equipment, erases data in a secure way and moves data centers. It offers rental and financing of IT hardware as well. In November 2024, 3i described a presence in more than 165 countries and more than 500,000 IT systems maintained.

The group has grown through acquisitions. The investment company 3i entered its capital in October 2019. Since then, Evernex has bought companies such as Storex in South Africa (2020), XSi in the United States (2022) and Ultra Support in the United Kingdom (2024). Ultra Support was the seventh acquisition since the investment of 3i. From an accounting point of view, each new company has its own ledger, its own currency and its own accounting habits. This is why consolidation matters a lot for this group.

Evernex IT maintenance.

Source: Evernex.

My internship

I work in the consolidation team in Paris. My internship lasts six months and started in September 2026. The team produces the accounts of the group every month. The work starts with the closing of each subsidiary and ends with the figures shown to top management.

I knew consolidation from my courses at ESSEC Business School. In practice, it is different. The numbers do not come from one ledger. They come from many entities. My role is to check that they fit together.

My missions

My main mission is to follow the monthly closing of the subsidiaries. They are in several countries and on several continents. Each month, I check that their accounts are complete and consistent before they enter the group figures. It is the first control of the team.

I also reconcile intercompany balances. This means checking that two entities of the group record the same transaction in the same way. For example, one entity books an invoice in December and the other one books it in January. This creates a difference of a few thousand euros. I look for the cause and ask the local accountant to correct it.

I follow indicators such as DSO (Days Sales Outstanding), DPO (Days Payable Outstanding) and bad debt. Bad debt is the part of the client invoices that may never be paid. I take part in the IFRS restatements used to calculate the EBITDA of the group, and I review the P&L of the entities. I also prepare slides for the CFO and the COO, with a focus on the expenses part of the EBITDA.

Required skills and knowledge

You need solid accounting bases, especially debit and credit, and a good knowledge of IFRS. I use Excel every day to check and compare large amounts of data. Rigor matters, because a small error in one entity can change the group figures.

Communication matters too. I often write to accountants in other countries and time zones. My requests must be clear and polite, so that they can explain or correct a number quickly.

What I learned

The quality of the group accounts starts with the quality of each local closing. I also learned to look at a number from the point of view of the group. A small difference in one entity can become a real issue when you compare it with the other side of the transaction.

Financial concepts related to my internship

The main concept of this post is financial consolidation. It is the core of my daily work. I define it first. Then I follow the process step by step and explain the purpose of each step.

What is financial consolidation?

Financial consolidation combines the financial statements of several legal entities into one set of accounts. The group is treated as if it were a single company. According to the IFRS Foundation, IFRS 10 defines consolidated financial statements as the statements of a parent and its subsidiaries, presented as those of a single economic entity.

Why do we need it? The performance of a group is not the sum of the accounts of its entities. Take an example. Entity A invoices EUR 200,000 of maintenance services to Entity B. Both belong to the same group. A records EUR 200,000 of revenue. B records EUR 200,000 of costs. For the group, nothing happened with the outside world. The group only paid itself. Without correction, the revenue and the costs of the group are both overstated by EUR 200,000.

Two other problems must be solved. The entities can work in different currencies. They can also use different accounting rules. The consolidation process solves these three problems one after the other. It starts with one question: which entities are in the group? This is the consolidation scope. When Evernex acquired Ultra Support in November 2024, a new entity entered the scope with all its accounts.

Example of a financial consolidation process flow.

Source: Mastek.

The steps below follow my own experience. They can differ a little from this example, because each group organizes its process in its own way.

Step 1: Local closing in each entity

Each subsidiary closes its own books first. The local team records its last entries, reconciles its bank and client accounts and produces a trial balance.

Purpose: the group accounts can only be as reliable as the local ones. An error that stays in this step will travel through the whole process.

Step 2: Reporting package and validation

Each entity sends its figures to the consolidation team in a standard reporting package. The local accounts are mapped to the chart of accounts of the group, so that a line such as revenue means the same thing everywhere. Checks flag missing data, accounts that do not balance and unusual changes from one month to the next.

Purpose: get comparable data and find the obvious errors early, while the local accountant can still fix them quickly.

Step 3: IFRS restatements

Local accounts often follow local rules. The group reports under IFRS. So the consolidation team adjusts the figures to the same standard. Leases are a good example. Under IFRS 16, a lessee records most leases on its balance sheet, as a right of use asset and a lease liability. Imagine that a subsidiary books a rent of EUR 120,000 per year as a simple expense in its local accounts. In the group accounts, this rent is replaced by a depreciation and an interest expense. The EBITDA of the group is then EUR 120,000 higher, because the rent is no longer in the operating expenses.

Purpose: measure all entities with the same rules, so that they can be added together and compared.

Step 4: Intercompany reconciliation

Before any elimination, the team checks that both sides of each internal transaction match. If entity A shows a receivable of EUR 200,000 on entity B, B must show a payable of EUR 200,000 to A. If B shows only EUR 195,000, the gap of EUR 5,000 has to be explained. The usual causes are an invoice booked in different months, a different exchange rate or a simple booking error.

Purpose: make the next steps possible, because an elimination works only if both sides agree. Handling intercompany activity is described as one of the most time consuming parts of the close (Workday). It is also where I spend a large part of my time as an intern.

Step 5: Currency translation

Subsidiaries report in their local currency. The group reports in one currency. Under IAS 21, assets and liabilities are translated at the closing rate. Income and expenses are translated at the rate of the transaction date, usually approximated by the average rate of the period. Equity items stay at historical rates.

Take an example. A UK subsidiary has assets of GBP 1,000, liabilities of GBP 400 and equity of GBP 600. This equity is made of a share capital of GBP 500 and a profit of GBP 100 for the year. The closing rate is 1.20, the average rate is 1.15 and the historical rate is 1.10 euros per pound. Assets become EUR 1,200 and liabilities EUR 480, so the net assets are EUR 720. On the equity side, the share capital becomes EUR 550 and the profit EUR 115, which makes EUR 665. The balance sheet does not balance by itself. The missing EUR 55 is recorded in equity, in a line called the cumulative translation adjustment (CTA).

Steps to calculate the cumulative translation adjustment (CTA).

Source: HighRadius.

Purpose: express everything in one currency, and keep the effect of exchange rates visible in equity instead of hiding it in the result of the year.

Step 6: Eliminations

Now the group removes everything that exists only inside the group. There are three main eliminations:

Internal revenue and costs: in our example, once the gap is corrected, the EUR 200,000 of revenue of A is cancelled against the EUR 200,000 of costs of B.
Internal receivables and payables: the receivable of A and the payable of B are removed from the balance sheet.
Investments and equity: the investment of the parent in a subsidiary is cancelled against the equity of this subsidiary. If the parent owns less than 100%, the share of the other shareholders is shown separately as non-controlling interests.

Purpose: avoid double counting, so that the group figures show only the transactions with the outside world.

Step 7: Review, analysis and reporting

The last step is the review of the consolidated balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. The team compares them with the budget and with the previous month. It explains the main changes and checks key indicators such as EBITDA or DSO. The figures are then presented to the management.

Purpose: make sure that every number can be explained. Consolidated accounts are a legal obligation. They are also the tool that managers use to take decisions.

Why should I be interested in this post?

If you want to work in asset management, equity research, audit or corporate finance, you will read consolidated accounts all the time. Knowing how they are built helps you understand what the numbers say. It explains, for example, why a strong dollar can change the reported results of a group, or why an acquisition makes the revenue jump.

This knowledge also helps if you look for an internship in consolidation, controlling or FP&A. These teams sit at the center of the information of the group and work with all the other departments. My advice to understand consolidation: follow one transaction from the local ledger to the group accounts.

Useful resources

Evernex

Evernex Evernex website

3i 3i-backed Evernex continues its international growth with acquisition of Ultra Support

Evernex Evernex completes its first acquisition since 3i’s investment and expands its presence in Eastern and Southern Africa

Evernex IT Maintenance: Complete guide for business IT teams

IFRS

IFRS Foundation IFRS 10 Consolidated Financial Statements

IFRS Foundation IAS 21 The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates

IFRS Foundation IFRS 16 Leases

Business resources

Mastek Oracle Financial Consolidation & Close Service (FCCS) Guide

HighRadius A Guide to Cumulative Translation Adjustment (CTA) with Examples

Workday Financial consolidation and close process guide

About the author

The article was written in October 2026 by Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA), 2022-2026).

▶ Discover all posts by Mathis HOUROU.

Client Segmentation and Private Banking: Marketing Strategy or Risk Shield?

February 20, 2026February 18, 2026 by Mathis HOUROU

In this article, Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA) 2022-2026) explains why Private Banking’s client segmentation is not just about sales, but also a crucial risk management tool for banks.

Introduction

In business school, we learn that client segmentation is a commercial tool. In Private Banking, it is used to group clients by wealth to offer them better services and adjust the pricing. However, during my experience at Société Générale Private Banking, I realized that segmentation is also a powerful risk management tool. Bankers have to take into account regulatory requirements such as KYC (Know Your Customer), as well as the client’s profile, risk tolerance, investment time, and biases.

This becomes even more important with complex products, such as structured products, where a mismatch can lead a client to losses he wasn’t ready to take. Such a situation can cause reputational issues, and regulatory risk for the bank.

This article will show how putting clients in different “boxes” helps banks to control risks and avoid potential disasters.

What is Client Segmentation?

In the context of Private Banking, client segmentation is the classification of clients into different categories in order to adapt the relationship and the level of risk.

Clients are not only grouped according to their AUM (Assets Under Management), but also on their financial experience, investment goals, time horizon, and their risk acceptance. This is all regulated by KYC and investor questionnaires.

On the first layer of this segmentation are the retail clients. These clients represent a vast majority of the clients and often have a low investing capacity.

Then you have the High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWI), they have investing power and need advice.

Finally, the Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals (UHNWI). They are extremely wealthy clients with complex and various needs.

While this may look like a typical marketing pyramid, it is actually a security tool. Each level has strict rules on what the banker can and cannot sell and at what price.

The Global Wealth Pyramid.

Source: UBS Global Wealth Report.

Segmentation as a Shield against Bad Investments

The most important link between segmentation and risk is suitability. Not every client can handle the same risk. Segmentation helps the bank to define the limits, both to protect the client from unsuitable investments and to protect the bank from regulatory and reputational risk. For example, a risk-averse client in the “retail” segment shouldn’t have access to very volatile products like derivatives or Private Equity.

By using these segments, the bank avoids a “mismatch.” If a bank sells a risky product to a client who doesn’t understand it and loses money, they can have legal problems. Segmentation acts like a filter to prevent this from happening.

Managing Regulatory and Legal Risk

Today, regulations like MiFID II in Europe are very strict. Banks have to prove that the product is good for the client. Segmentation simplifies this, if a product is rated “Risk 5/5” for example, it will be automatically unavailable for clients in the “Conservative” segment.

This reduces the risk of lawsuits and fines and it ensures that the bank is really protecting the client, sometimes even against their own will, by refusing to sell them something too dangerous for their profile.

Risk vs Return relationship.
Risk vs Return JPM
Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

The Human Factor: Behavioral Risk

Risk is not just about numbers; it is also about psychology. In fact, behavioral risk is often underestimated because difficult to measure.

For example, when the market crashes, clients can react differently. An educated investor is going to see an opportunity to buy and will stay calm and steady, while a less experienced client might panic and sell everything at the bottom in fear of losing everything he has.

Finally, segmentation helps bankers to anticipate these reactions because they know that one specific segment needs reassurance and phone calls during a crisis, while another segment is going to be more resilient and will want updates on new opportunities.

Conclusion

To conclude, client segmentation is often shown in Business Schools as a way to maximize profits, but in Private Banking, it is a good way to minimize risks.

It protects the client and the bank at the same time. It makes sure that complicated products are only sold to the clients who understand them, and it helps bankers manage the emotions of the investors.

For us finance students, this is a great lesson: risk management is not just about Excel sheets and formulas. It starts with knowing exactly who your client is.

Useful resources

J.P. Morgan Asset Management Guide to the Markets (Europe)

UBS UBS Global Wealth Report 2025

About the author

The article was written in February 2026 by Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA)).

▶ Discover all articles by Mathis HOUROU.

Green Bonds: Financial Innovation or Marketing Tool?

February 13, 2026 by Mathis HOUROU

In this article, Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA) 2022-2026) explores the definition of green bonds and their limits to see if they are a real financial innovation or primarily a marketing tool.

Introduction

In the last ten years, green bonds have become very popular in sustainable finance. Governments and big companies use them to finance projects with a positive impact on the environment, like green energy or clean transport. For example, in January 2017 France issued its first sovereign green bond for €7 billion, one of the largest green bond issuances at the time, to finance climate-related and environmental projects.

Today, environmental criteria are very important for investors. Green bonds are often seen as a perfect solution to mix profit and sustainability. In fact, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative, the global green bond market surpassed $550 billion in annual issuance in 2021, showing a growing demand. However, are green bonds really different from traditional bonds, or are they just a marketing strategy from companies to appear more ethical?

This article looks at the definition of green bonds and their limits to see if they are a real financial innovation or just some greenwashing used to make even more money.

What is a Green Bond?

First, a green bond is a debt instrument, so the money raised must be used only for projects that help the environment.

Technically, green bonds work exactly like normal bonds. They have a maturity date, they pay interests (coupons). For instance, if a company issues a green bond to build a solar farm and goes bankrupt, the investor loses money, just like with a standard bond.

The only real difference is that the money must finance green projects. There are voluntary rules, like the Green Bond Principles by the ICMA (International Capital Market Association), for transparency, but they are not laws.

Global annual green bond issuance (USD bn).

Source: Reuters

A Fast-Growing Market

Since the first green bond by the European Investment Bank in 2007, the market has grown a lot. Now, it is a big part of the bond market. There are three main reasons for this evolution:

Demand: Investors want to respect ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) rules and are more eco-conscious.
Regulations: Governments encourage green finance and incentivize people to invest in those funds by creating advantages.
Reputation: For companies, issuing a green bond is good for their image. It shows they care about the planet and the future.

Are They Financially Different?

From a financial point of view, green bonds are very similar to classic bonds. The risk and the return are usually equivalent.

There is a debate about a “greenium” or green premium. This means that investors might accept a lower interest rate because the bond is green. But in reality, the price of the bond depends mostly on interest rates and the credit quality of the issuer, not just the “green label”.

Evolution of the “Greenium” (yield difference between green and non-green bonds).
Greenium evolution chart
Source: Amundi

The Risk of Greenwashing

The main problem with green bonds is transparency. The definition of a “green project” can be vague.

This creates a big risk of “greenwashing.” A company might label a bond as green for a project that is not very ambitious, just to attract investors. The OECD has also warned that greenwashing can undermine trust in sustainable finance markets if issuers exaggerate environmental benefits.

Even if there are auditors to look into the projects, there are still not enough binding rules and laws to compare and verify whether a project is truly green. The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) notes that its Green Bond Principles remain voluntary guidelines rather than legal regulation.

Why do Investors Buy Them?

For investors, green bonds are very useful. They allow them to respect their sustainability goals without changing the risk of their portfolio. In particular, they are widely purchased by institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and asset managers, who increasingly integrate ESG criteria into their investment strategies.

However, buying a green bond does not always mean better returns or better diversification. It is often a decision based on strategy and regulation, not just financial performance.

The Spectrum of Capital: positioning green bonds between traditional investment and impact investing.

Source: Russell Investments

Conclusion

From a technical standpoint, green bonds do not represent a new financial mechanism. They function exactly like traditional bonds.

However, from a strategic perspective, they are a real innovation. They shift how capital is allocated by directing funds specifically toward environmental goals, forcing issuers to be more transparent.

While they are not a perfect solution for climate change and carry risks of greenwashing, green bonds remain a vital tool. They bridge the gap between financial markets and the urgent needs of our planet.

Useful resources

OECD Protecting and empowering consumers in the green transition

ESG News US Green Bond Sales Near Record High, Reaching $550B: BloombergNEF Repor

Banque de France (April 2025) Obligation verte

Climate Bonds Initiative Market Data

ICMA Green Bond Principles

Amundi Research Center ESG & Green Bonds

About the author

The article was written in February 2026 by Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA)).

▶ Discover all articles by Mathis HOUROU.

My Internship Experience at Société Générale Private Banking

February 13, 2026 by Mathis HOUROU

In this article, Mathis HOUROU (ESSEC Business School, Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA)) shares his professional experience as an intern in Société Générale Private Banking, showing the role of analytical tools, performance monitoring and advisory support in a wealth management environment.

About the company

Société Générale is a major European banking group with operations in more than 60 countries. As of 31 December 2024, the Group employed approximately 119,000 people, served over 26 million clients in 62 countries, and reported total assets of EUR 1,573.5bn with total equity of EUR 79.6bn. In 2024, net banking income amounted to EUR 26.8bn, while group net income reached EUR 4.2bn.

Logo of Société Générale Private Banking.

Source: Société Generale.

Société Générale is one of the largest European banking groups, offering retail banking, corporate and investment banking, and wealth management services. The Group operates in multiple countries, from individuals to large companies, with diversified financial activities.

Within the Group, private banking represents a very strategic business dedicated to high-net-worth individuals (HNWI). It combines investment advisory, portfolio management, and long-term wealth structuring, relying mainly on a close relationship with the clients.

The role of this segment is crucial for the bank, as high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) create a lot of value. If the bank can’t offer them a service that is differentiating from normal clients, they will go to the competitor. The clients are either coming from the retail segment named SGRF when their account is reaching a certain amount (often around 500k€) or acquired directly from the competitor. In order to do so, Société Générale Private Banking (SGPB) is offering a panel of different investments, exclusive offers, special relationships, and many more.

My internship

During my internship, I worked within the “Maison de Gestion et Conseil” team at Société Générale Private Banking in Paris. My team was responsible for the entire segment of “Banque Privée” and “Gestion Privée” in France, acting as a support function for private bankers and management.

Over a period of 6 months, my role consisted in assisting the team with the day-to-day operation. Being able to help senior managers with precision, professionalism, and efficiency with almost no prior experience was really challenging.