It will take ‘rogue trader' Jérôme Kerviel 170,000 years to pay back the €4.9bn he is supposed to have lost SocGen - that is not bad going.
It makes Nick Leeson’s £827m loss for Barings look paltry, or the £700m Peter Young ended up costing Deutsche Morgan Grenfell seem like chicken feed. Look on the bright side – we will have paid down the national debt long before he will have paid his dues, even if Dave does take our child benefit away. Is Kerviel an anti-hero who cocked a snook at the elite French bank or is he just a crap gambler? To call him a trader infers he knew what he was doing, and some in France have even tried to portray him as a genius. The truth of the matter will probably not appear for a while, probably ...
To continue reading this article...
Join Investment Week for free
Signup and gain exclusive members-only insights - all free of charge!
- Unlimited access to real-time news, analysis and opinion from the investment industry, including the Sustainable Hub covering fund news from the ESG space
- Get ahead of regulatory and technological changes affecting fund management
- Important and breaking news stories selected by the editors delivered straight to your inbox each day
- Weekly members-only newsletter with exclusive opinion pieces from leading industry experts
- Be the first to hear about our extensive events schedule and awards programmes
