French Bank Rocked by Rogue Trader $7.2 Billion in Losses On a Quiet 31-Year-Old

PARIS -- The rogues' gallery of banking has a new candidate for membership: 31-year-old trader Jérôme Kerviel.

In one of the banking world's most unsettling recent disclosures, France's Société Générale SA said Mr. Kerviel had cost the bank €4.9 billion, equal to $7.2 billion, by making huge unauthorized trades that he hid for months by hacking into computers. The combined trading positions he built up over recent months, say people close to the situation, totaled some €50 billion, or $73 billion.



Jerome Kerviel
The loss -- dwarfing the $1.3 billion Nick Leeson cost British bank Barings in 1995 -- has forced Société Générale to seek a capital infusion. It is expected to try to raise €5.5 billion, chiefly from its existing shareholders.

The loss exposes the latest breakdown of risk controls at a big international financial institution, along with U.S. banks that have hemorrhaged billions of dollars since the crisis in subprime mortgages developed last summer. Some analysts speculate that the French bank's frantic efforts to unwind the unauthorized trades over 72 hours may have contributed to the volatility and declines that rattled European markets on Monday. (See related article.)

In addition to the billions, Société Générale appeared for a time to have lost Mr. Kerviel as well. Executives at the bank, still stunned at the magnitude of the scandal, told reporters yesterday they hadn't kept track of his whereabouts since questioning him on Saturday.


• Daily Davos:Massive Trading Loss Is Talk of the TownBut an attorney at a law firm representing Mr. Kerviel said the trader had spent much of the week with his lawyer. Asked whether Mr. Kerviel rejects the banks' accusations, the lawyer said only: "He is not on the run. He is standing by to answer to justice. He spent the day at our office."

Early details, including accounts from executives at the French bank, paint a picture of an ordinary trader who used extraordinary means to game the bank's own system and hide massive unauthorized trades on stock-index futures. Even as bank executives were scrambling to deal with the trail of destruction, they were at a loss to describe his motivations. Société Générale executives said that the early investigation indicated the trader didn't earn a dime on his actions. They also said he appeared to be acting alone.

"He was mentally weak," said the bank's co-chief executive, Philippe Citerne. "I have no idea why he did that." Société Générale -- France's second-largest bank after BNP Paribas, founded by a decree signed by Napoleon III -- has lodged a complaint against him with French prosecutors.

Mr. Kerviel is no trading legend who let a transaction get out of hand. He was a low-level trader in the bank's "Delta One" desk in western Paris, earning about €100,000 ($145,000) a year. His job was to make bets on how large European stock indexes would move, according to bank officials. His expertise was trading baskets of stocks such as the Euro Stoxx 50.

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