In an afternoon of friendly football among organisations in Luxembourg’s financial sector, KPMG dominated the results, beating the EIB in the all-women’s tournament and Big Four rival Deloitte in the mixed tournament.
“The player who scored the winning goal in the women’s final had never scored a goal before, so picked the right time for her first one!” says Hana Prochaska, Aztec’s head of business development in Europe and one of the event’s key organisers. “More generally, it was great to see so many of our clients and partners come together and enter into the spirit of the day. And the weather was good to us!”
The event is part football, part networking: 41 teams competed during the afternoon, with an informal networking session following until late. New this year was a women-only league of six teams, leaving 35 teams for the mixed league.
“It has grown into something we never expected,” says Prochaska, explaining that the event started in 2016 as a “small, spontaneous event” with around a hundred people.
Since 2016 (skipping the two pandemic years), the event’s popularity has snowballed. Prochaska says that companies will contact Aztec in September to reserve a spot for the following May. The demand has not been without logistics challenges: capacity for 28 teams was foreseen this year, which the organisers managed to stretch to 41. “Year by year, it’s become bigger, better,” adds Prochaska.
This year’s teams included asset managers, banks, law firms, Big Four firms and others. “I would say this is one of the cornerstone networking events in the financial industry in Luxembourg,” comments Prochaska.
The informal, sporty environment is unlike most other networking events in the grand duchy, she adds. “It’s very unique.”
Focus on diversity
The event falls near International Diversity Day (21 May), and Prochaska wants to highlight the ambitions of the firm in that regard. Besides the addition of the women-only league, this year Aztec’s participants raised money for (and wore rainbow-coloured shoelaces to support) Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces Campaign, a charity that promotes LGBTQ+ inclusion in sports. The firm is also about to sign the Luxembourg Diversity Charter, an initiative of IMS Luxembourg, and is currently organising events for LGBTQ+ week in July.
“We’re very much engaged in this area,” says Prochaska.