Word: traders
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Three days was all it took in 1995, after the bank-busting deals of rogue trader Nick Leeson had come to light, for the venerable Barings Bank to file for bankruptcy and forever vanish. Managers at France's Société Générale may well be wondering why their agony endures, a week and counting after a far bigger scandal that cost it $7.13 billion to unwind - and that subjected its risk control procedures to public mockery. Yet the end is still not in sight. The SocGen's board of directors, meeting in emergency session, left...
...board's rejection of Bouton's resignation surprised many observers, considering who has been calling for heads to roll after the bank's staggering losses from allegedly unauthorized speculative activity by Jérome Kerviel, a junior derivates trader. Earlier in the week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy led a parade of government officials signaling expectations that the highest ranks of the bank's management would step up and assume responsibility in the affair. "We are in a system where, when you have a big salary - which is without doubt legitimate - and there is a big problem, you cannot escape your...
...Days before, Société Générale executives had discovered Kerviel's massive illicit operation, after the trader had gambled positions worth about $73 billion. That's actually more than the bank's entire worth by around $25 billion. Instantly, this evoked comparisons in the media with another lone rogue, Nick Leeson, whose fictitious trades in Singapore lost $1.4 billion for Barings Bank in 1995, wiping out the bank's cash reserves. Leeson was arrested after an international manhunt, and spent more than three years in a Singapore jail. By contrast, Soci...
...their forced sell-off had probably furthered last week's market slump. "I cannot deny that if we had not been selling the market would have fallen less," he said, though he said he thought its effect had been "minimal." With the markets in turmoil, the dark-haired, slim trader slipped out of sight, surrendering to financial police only on Saturday afternoon. Kerviel remains in custody in Paris but so far faces no criminal charges. The clock is running however: by early afternoon Monday, police must either free him or present Kerviel to a judge for the opening...
...Kerviel had yet to answer publicly some of the scheme's most intriguing questions: Did he personally sock away millions from his fictitious trading? And if not, what made a quiet trader - whose Facebook page had just 11 friends - engage in a gargantuan con job and risk years in jail? Those answers might have to wait for Kerviel's trial. Or perhaps for another movie along the lines of the 1999 film Rogue Trader, which portrayed Leeson's extraordinary operation. And should you wish to try and make some money yourself, Leeson has been quoted by one British bookie...