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French Rogue Trader Forced to Work Long Hours

fluff

Monkey Turbo
Sep 8, 2001
5,673
2
Feeling the lag
From Le Monde;

Friends of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel last night blamed his $7 billion losses on unbearable levels of stress brought on by a punishing 30 hour week.

Kerviel was known to start work as early as nine in the morning and still be at his desk at five or even five-thirty, often with just an hour and a half for lunch.

One colleague said: "He was, how you say, une workaholique. I have a family and a mistress so I would leave the office at around 2pm at the latest if I wasn't on strike.”

"But Jerome was tied to that desk. One day I came back to the office at 3pm because I had forgotten my stupid little hat and there he was, fast asleep on the photocopier.”

"I remembered he had been working for almost six hours."

As the losses mounted, Kerviel tried to conceal his bad trades by covering them with an intense red wine sauce, later switching to delicate pastry horns.

At one point he managed to dispose of dozens of transactions by hiding them inside vol-au-vent cases and staging a fake reception.

Last night a spokesman for Sócíété Générálé denied that Kerviel was over worked, insisting he lost the money after betting that the French were about to stop being rude, lazy, arrogant.
 

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
Guess the French couldn't replicate the successful Brit Nick Leeson who took down Barings thirteen years ago:shakefist:
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,513
7,056
Colorado
As an insider to this industry, with current Risk and compliance groups, this type of trade could not go unnoticed this long. Especially given the duplicity of reporting from both sides of the trade, TO the other side.
As of this morning, Exchange officials were beginning the motions into an investigation to this as the company writing off their losses on a sole individual.