Jan 26, 2008
Full impact of SG scandal revealed after six days of mounting horror
French bank ploughs through records to find one trader at the heart of the matter
DAVOS - MR JEAN-PIERRE Mustier, Societe Generale's (SG's) head of investment banking, was on his way home on the evening of Jan 18 when he received the call that would throw the French bank into turmoil.
One of the bank's traders had flagged a potential problem in its trading books, according to the Financial Times (FT).
As Mr Mustier headed to SG's offices in the La Defense business district on the outskirts of Paris, he had no concept of the scale of the crisis that was about to unfold.
Six sleepless nights later, SG would tell the world it had become the victim of a rogue trader who, apparently alone, had blown a 4.9 billion euro (S$10.2 billion) hole in the bank's books.
Working through trading records that Friday night, executives began to realise the scale of the bank's problems, FT reported.
Finally, they narrowed the discrepancies to positions managed by Mr Jerome Kerviel, a 31-year-old trader on the bank's Delta One trading desk.
RELATED LINKS
How the rogue trade was unravelled
Mr Kerviel was an arbitrageur, responsible for exploiting tiny price differences in the prices of futures contracts based on European futures indexes.
The strategy required Mr Kerviel to hedge his portfolio - matching long positions in futures contracts with corresponding short positions.
With mounting horror, executives realised that he had been doing nothing of the sort, the paper reported. Mr Kerviel had been faking his hedging contracts, SG said, in effect taking a massive punt that European stock markets would rise.
He had joined SG in 2000, working in the bank's back office. But after several years, he was moved to the trading desk - a beneficiary of an effort by the bank to promote promising back-office employees.
After summoning Mr Kerviel to the office last Saturday afternoon, Mr Mustier locked him in a meeting room and interrogated him throughout the night.
Slowly the magnitude of the affair became clear. The bank said that, using accounts and passwords belonging to other employees, Mr Kerviel logged into SG's systems and approved his fictitious trades. His knowledge of control systems - a legacy of his years in the back office - allowed him to keep his activities hidden.
According to the bank, Mr Kerviel had first experimented with his fraudulent strategy last year. But he closed the position at the end of the year, realising a small profit.
Early this year, however, the bank said he started again, and his bets quickly went south. By last Sunday night, SG executives had realised that Mr Kerviel had taken positions worth several billion euros in three leading European indexes. At that point, the bank was sitting on a 1.5 billion euro loss.
Mr Kerviel's motivation is unclear, though Mr Mustier does not believe he was doing it for profit.
Indeed, the trader - who could not be reached for comment - seemed confused about what he was doing.
'He understood he was taking huge positions, but I don't think he understood the impact,' Mr Mustier said. 'He kept telling me during the night that he had discovered a new trading technique which was performing very well.'
By that Sunday night, the pressure on SG was mounting high. The bank had been due on that following Monday to announce two billion euros worth of write-downs on its fixed-income positions. But, with the approval of its board of directors, the French central bank, and the market authorities' executives decided to delay the announcement in order to close out the positions.
'We had no choice,' Mr Mustier told FT. 'For the sake of our shareholders, we cannot speculate with such a large position.'
On that Monday morning, SG began to unload Mr Kerviel's huge futures contracts. But the markets were moving against the bank. Investors in Asia and Europe were offloading equities.
As SG attempted to sell, its losses mounted. By Wednesday evening, when it finally closed Mr Keviel's positions, the loss had risen to 4.9 billion euros.
Mr Daniel Bouton, SG's canny and long-serving chief executive, decided to look at ways of raising capital.
After consulting with JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, Mr Bouton toyed with the idea of seeking fresh capital from a sovereign wealth investor, FT reported. But ultimately, it was decided that the best route was to launch a rights issue to raise 5.5 billion euros.
On Thursday morning, SG announced the shocking news: One employee had put the future of one of France's largest banks at risk.
Full impact of SG scandal revealed after six days of mounting horror
French bank ploughs through records to find one trader at the heart of the matter
DAVOS - MR JEAN-PIERRE Mustier, Societe Generale's (SG's) head of investment banking, was on his way home on the evening of Jan 18 when he received the call that would throw the French bank into turmoil.
One of the bank's traders had flagged a potential problem in its trading books, according to the Financial Times (FT).
As Mr Mustier headed to SG's offices in the La Defense business district on the outskirts of Paris, he had no concept of the scale of the crisis that was about to unfold.
Six sleepless nights later, SG would tell the world it had become the victim of a rogue trader who, apparently alone, had blown a 4.9 billion euro (S$10.2 billion) hole in the bank's books.
Working through trading records that Friday night, executives began to realise the scale of the bank's problems, FT reported.
Finally, they narrowed the discrepancies to positions managed by Mr Jerome Kerviel, a 31-year-old trader on the bank's Delta One trading desk.
RELATED LINKS
How the rogue trade was unravelled
Mr Kerviel was an arbitrageur, responsible for exploiting tiny price differences in the prices of futures contracts based on European futures indexes.
The strategy required Mr Kerviel to hedge his portfolio - matching long positions in futures contracts with corresponding short positions.
With mounting horror, executives realised that he had been doing nothing of the sort, the paper reported. Mr Kerviel had been faking his hedging contracts, SG said, in effect taking a massive punt that European stock markets would rise.
He had joined SG in 2000, working in the bank's back office. But after several years, he was moved to the trading desk - a beneficiary of an effort by the bank to promote promising back-office employees.
After summoning Mr Kerviel to the office last Saturday afternoon, Mr Mustier locked him in a meeting room and interrogated him throughout the night.
Slowly the magnitude of the affair became clear. The bank said that, using accounts and passwords belonging to other employees, Mr Kerviel logged into SG's systems and approved his fictitious trades. His knowledge of control systems - a legacy of his years in the back office - allowed him to keep his activities hidden.
According to the bank, Mr Kerviel had first experimented with his fraudulent strategy last year. But he closed the position at the end of the year, realising a small profit.
Early this year, however, the bank said he started again, and his bets quickly went south. By last Sunday night, SG executives had realised that Mr Kerviel had taken positions worth several billion euros in three leading European indexes. At that point, the bank was sitting on a 1.5 billion euro loss.
Mr Kerviel's motivation is unclear, though Mr Mustier does not believe he was doing it for profit.
Indeed, the trader - who could not be reached for comment - seemed confused about what he was doing.
'He understood he was taking huge positions, but I don't think he understood the impact,' Mr Mustier said. 'He kept telling me during the night that he had discovered a new trading technique which was performing very well.'
By that Sunday night, the pressure on SG was mounting high. The bank had been due on that following Monday to announce two billion euros worth of write-downs on its fixed-income positions. But, with the approval of its board of directors, the French central bank, and the market authorities' executives decided to delay the announcement in order to close out the positions.
'We had no choice,' Mr Mustier told FT. 'For the sake of our shareholders, we cannot speculate with such a large position.'
On that Monday morning, SG began to unload Mr Kerviel's huge futures contracts. But the markets were moving against the bank. Investors in Asia and Europe were offloading equities.
As SG attempted to sell, its losses mounted. By Wednesday evening, when it finally closed Mr Keviel's positions, the loss had risen to 4.9 billion euros.
Mr Daniel Bouton, SG's canny and long-serving chief executive, decided to look at ways of raising capital.
After consulting with JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, Mr Bouton toyed with the idea of seeking fresh capital from a sovereign wealth investor, FT reported. But ultimately, it was decided that the best route was to launch a rights issue to raise 5.5 billion euros.
On Thursday morning, SG announced the shocking news: One employee had put the future of one of France's largest banks at risk.