Kerviel trial expected to expose weaknesses in French banking system
June 9th, 2010
The trial of French “rogue trader” Jérôme Kerviel got underway yesterday in the Palais de Justice on Paris’s Ile de la Cité.
The case hinges on whether Kerviel, who has become something of an anti-hero in France, could have acted autonomously when concocting the trades that lost his employer Société Generale €4.9 billion in January 2008, as the bank claims, or whether his superiors were aware of his every move — as he has claimed in his book L’Engrenage: Mémoires d’un Trader (The Spiral: Memories of a Trader).
Personally I suspect that, in keeping with what happened at many banks including HBOS, Kerviel, 33, was encouraged to engage in ever more reckless gambling as long as he made a profit. Then when the plan turned sour, management sought to cover their own backs by claiming his trades were unauthorized and blaming the whole thing on him.
- To follow the trial on Twitter, click on @liliesaulnier
- To read Charles Bremner’s blog from the courtroom, click here
Short URL: https://www.ianfraser.org/?p=1278
Posted by Ian Fraser
on Jun 9 2010. Filed under Blog.
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