The view from the Palais de Chaillot in Paris is impressive. Near the Trocadéro metro station, this exhibition centre, built in the 1930s, boasts views of some of Paris’s main attractions: the Eiffel Tower, the Hôtel des Invalides and a fine view of skyscrapers cutting across the clear autumnal sky.

But walk just a hundred metres or two from this tourist idyll and you can enter a variety of elegant buildings that house another exciting, if less visible, part of Parisian culture — its financial services industry.

At first appearance, the two spheres seem completely different. The romantic and architecturally indulgent Parisian landscape appears to contrast with the high tech world of derivatives, where technology is quickly outpaced and replaced and every second is crucial.

But, according to market participants, the two have something vital in common — a quintessential Frenchness that no foreigner, no matter how well-seasoned a traveller,...