It’s “Mission Green” mes amis.
That is, the preliminary findings on the activities of rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel – as investigated by the Inspection Generale of Société Générale.
The report in full for all francophones, is available here. The rest of us rosbifs will have to be contented with the press release. From which, it would seem, the report is a bit of a fudge.
Though not exonerated, SocGen is certainly painted in the least harsh light. The fraud is “firstly” attributable to the “efficiency and variety of the concealment techniques employed by the fraudster.”
One curious point, is the fact that the fake counterparties for most of Kerviel’s fake hedges were internal ones… how did SocGen miss that?
And, as spotted by Alea, this chart also makes for interesting viewing:
The dashed line (running around zero) records the traders official P&L, while the continuous one represents Kerviel’s rogue futures P&L. Alea observes:
The report confirms that Mr. Kerviel was offered a 300k euros bonus… I am wondering why he should get a 300k bonus for a P&L officiel around 0.
While Felix Salmon notes that Kerviel, having made a huge profit through 2007, had a remarkably static December…
By sheerest coincidence, the bank then offers him a bonus of €300,000. The minute he starts a new year, he’s off trading again, and immediately falls off a cliff.
What was Jérôme doing in December?