[5][6][7][8] It was founded in 2000 from the merger of two of France's foremost financial institutions, Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) and Paribas.

On 9 August 2007, BNP Paribas became the first major financial group to acknowledge the impact of the sub-prime crisis by closing two funds exposed to it.

[19][20] On 6 October 2008, BNP took over 75% of troubled bank Fortis' activities in Belgium, and 66% in Luxembourg, in exchange for the Belgian government becoming the new group's major shareholder.

In April 2024, it was announced BNP Paribas had acquired Fosun International's entire 9% stake in Ageas, worth €730 million.

[28][29][30] BNP Paribas reached an agreement in December 2013 to acquire Rabobank's Polish unit BGZ Bank for around $1.4 billion.

The bank has hired 20 private bankers, including Tiffeny Situ from Morgan Stanley, Wendy Chan from Citigroup and Martin Loh from Credit Suisse Group, as part of its expansion program.

[36] In 2022, total revenues of €50.4 billion represent an increase of 9% compared to 2021, BNP Paribas remains at the top of the French banks' ranking in terms of activity.

During this year, BNP Paribas Group net income attributable to equity holders increased to 7.5% (to 10.2 billion euros).

The geographic breakdown of Net Banking Income (NBI) at the end of 2020 is as follows: Europe (72.2%), North America (12.9%), Asia Pacific (8.6%) and others (6.3%).

[37] The BNP Paribas logo since 2000 (designed by Laurent Vincent under the leadership of the Communications Director, Antoine Sire) is called the "courbe d'envol" (curve of taking flight).

BNP Paribas CIB is a globally recognised leader in two areas of expertise: trading derivatives on all asset classes, and structured financing.

BNP Paribas CIB benefits from the Group's large asset base (over €2 trillion) and diverse business model, and was resilient through the 2008 financial crisis.

[57] On 30 May 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States Department of Justice was negotiating a possible guilty plea with BNP Paribas as well as the size of the resulting fine for violating U.S. regulations and evading US sanctions.

[59] On 1 July 2014, BNP Paribas pled guilty in a New York state court to falsifying business records as well as conspiracy in connection to those falsifications.

[63] On 6 February 2024, the Federal Reserve announced that it had lifted a pair of 2014 enforcement actions it imposed on France's BNP Paribas, after the bank overhauled its compliance with U.S. sanctions laws.

[1] In 2010 the French government's Autorité de la concurrence fined BNP and 10 other banks €384 million for colluding to charge unjustified fees on check processing, including extra fees during the transition from paper check transfer to "Exchanges Check-Image" electronic transfer.

[64][65] The German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung[66] FOCUS,[67] Bloomberg[68] and the French Les Échos[69] newspapers published an article regarding a €152 million mistrade (erroneous trade) in which BNP Paribas Arbitrage was allegedly involved.

[72][73][74] The Financial Times published an article in March 2018 about the case with the title "BNP Paribas failed to book trades in Germany for a week".