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He’s been called a “computer genius,” an “unlikely hero,” and “the world’s biggest rogue trader.”
But until the astounding $7.2 billion fraud he perpetrated at Société Générale was announced early this week, Jérôme Kerviel was just an average guy. Even his Facebook page—bleak, photo-less, and with just 11 friends listed (that number plummeted to three after Mr. Kerviel’s fraud was announced), is unremarkable. Update: Mr. Kerviel is now down to one Facebook friend.
The 31-year-old trader joined SocGen, France’s second largest bank, in 2000 after completing a business degree at Management des Operations de Marche in Lyon, Bloomberg reported. In 2006, he moved from the bank’s back office to the Delta One trading desk on SocGen’s Paris trading floor, according to the Financial Times.
But despite his unremarkable position and salary (less than 100,000 euros a year, Bloomberg reported), Mr. Kerviel clearly had big plans. He used his expert knowledge of the bank’s risk management controls—gained during the years he spent in SocGen’s back office—to conceal billions of dollars of unauthorized equity futures trades he made starting in early 2007.
At first the trades paid off, Bloomberg reported, but by the beginning of 2008, the scheme — essentially, a massive bet that the Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index would rise — had backfired. Last Friday, a compliance officer at SocGen noticed a trade that had exceeded the bank’s limits. When the bank took a closer look, they learned the trade didn’t exist. That was enough to trigger an internal investigation last weekend.
According to Bloomberg, Mr. Kerviel took part in the investigation, but then disappeared. Jean-Pierre Mustier, head of SocGen’s investment-banking unit, told Bloomberg he didn’t know Mr. Kerviel’s whereabouts. Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, also told Bloomberg that Mr. Kerviel was possibly “on the run.”
But The Financial Times reported a much less dramatic version of the story, in which Mr. Kerviel confessed to the fraud over the weekend, during the bank’s investigation, and was suspended.
Mr. Kerviel and several of his colleagues — including Luc Francois, head of equity markets at the bank — will be fired, Bloomberg reported. Plans for a lawsuit brought by SocGen against Mr. Kerviel are also in the works.
But while the revelation of Mr. Kerviel’s fraud is hugely embarrassing to SocGen, the affair has not been entirely tragic, according to the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. On Thursday, The paper gleefully seized SocGen’s fraud-induced crisis as the underlying impetus for Tuesday’s surprise interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.
“U.S. borrowers, give thanks to an unlikely hero: Jerome Kerviel,” The Globe and Mail’s Boyd Erman wrote. “As you revel in the lower interest charges on your line of credit…think of how one brave Frenchman came to your rescue.”
Meanwhile, on Facebook, fan groups dedicated to Mr. Kerviel (the largest has more than 400 members so far) are already popping up. |
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发表于 2008-1-24 23:00
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