Ok... sorry, sorry, sorry ... I know I've been out of the bloggersphere lately while the world has kept on going and history making moments are happening all over the place.....
I guess if you've seen the news or heard about the notorious french rougue trader scandal that's been making headlines for the past week then you'll probably understand why it's been hectic for us here (both hubby & I work in the Finance sector).... Oh.... and just for the record, neither of us work for the bank in question.
The funny thing is that although usually this type of story bores me to death (I'd much rather hear what loony Britney Spears is up to) this whole thing has turned into a mix of juicy tabloid material and great murder/mistery twists that's been keeping us (the entire French population and main newspapers' front page around the world) on our toes .....
Basically, it's got everyone asking the same question: how could this happen???!!!
Let's think this out for a second :
Fact : Here's a young 30 something guy with 6 years experience in back office and only 2 years in trading.
Question : None, that sounds pretty normal to me.
Fact : He lost 5.5 billion euro (7.2 billion USD) in the stock market and as a result is bringing down France's 2nd largest bank
Question : How tha heck can this happen ?!?!?!?
Fact : In order to loose 5.5 billion euro on the market you have to have 50 billion euro to begin with
Question : What idiot gives an inexeperienced 30 year old FIFTY BILLION EURO to play on the market with????
Fact : The guy says his management knew the risks he was taking and chose to look the other way because up until then he hadn't lost them any money
Fact : The bank says the guy is a "computer genius" that regularly tapped into the risk management system in order to cover up his losses and up his funds limit and management was never aware of this.
Question : Who can you belive? Personally, neither...
Fact : In order to recover from this, the bank in question has announced a Capital Increase operation in the next few weeks.
Question : Who is going to buy this bank and what consequences will it have on the market, the competitors (us for that matter) and the employees?
Fact : The stock price of the bank in question has dropped so dangerously low that virtually it's a sitting duck for any company on the market for a chunk of the highly profitable french banking sector... it's almost like buying a bank during the soldes season!!!
Question : Same as the previous question.
And then come the fun plot twists that have kept us salivating for these past days :
Twist : The trader's brother used to work for a competitor bank (us) and was fired on "fraud and unethical" grounds...
Twist : We (the bank I work for) might actually be the much feared buyer when the capital increase does/will happen
Twist : Contrary to what the bank claims, it seems at least one of the top Executive Committee Officers seems to have been aware of this issue before it was publicly announced... He made a 25 million profit (!!!) from selling his shares in the company a few days before the s*** hit the fan....
Twist : The trader is not the mad scheming lying cheater he was initially portrayed as but instead it seems he was just another regular guy doing his job with a little too much délires de grandeur.....
Question that might-become Twist : Will or will not Président Daniel Bouton be fired for this unprecedented fiasco ?
Well, seeing that we are left with more questions than answers so far, I presume this story will continue to develop in the next days.
Hillary? Barack? Who cares who they are??? All we want to hear about is Jerôme Kerviel...........oh, yeah.............. and Britney.
Fned.
2 comments:
Hey, misery loves company! You're as scandolous there as we are here. And don't worry, Brittany is "universal"!!
loved your commentary! Now I can see the big picture - although, still boggles the mind! But, I do have one question: can't we give poor Britney a break?? I mean she'll figure herself out someday, won't she?
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