France's rogue trader freed after escaping fraud charges

AFP on Yahoo ^ | 1/28/08 | Eve Szeftel

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

The losses ballooned to about $7 billion as the company unwound the positions into a market that was already dropping. As I understand it, their trades exacerbated the drop, increasing their losses.

That the executives at SoGen just dumped these large positions into the market shows what little regard they have for shareholder value. At least in the collapse of LTCM, the consortium that took over recognized they would preserve more value by doing due diligence on the various positions and gradually unwinding them over a period of time at best advantage.

There seems to be a curious combination of arrogance and negligence evident in SoGen that is reminiscent of the massive problems at Credit Lyonnais in recent years.

[Bob]

I’m fairly sure that it will be a minimum of several weeks, if not months, before the whole story, or as much of it as we’re likely to get, comes out. I’m also sure that the plaintiffs’ lawyers for the stockholders are salivating as we type.

[az_gila]

When questioned by his boss about some ficticious traders ability to pay, he wrote a ficticioius email from the ficticious trader and the boss apparently accepted it.

---

Well, that sounds like “attempted fraud” to me. But what do I know?

I guess French logic is different...

[RSmithOpt]

Drink an American wine?

[Junior_G]

So...is this enough to trigger a youth riot?

[RSmithOpt]

He’s just the patsy in this wiz wiz scheme...they knew their positions. Even the US’s GAO in 01/07 was going long on the ‘continued growth’ in the economy all fueled by the ‘housing boom’. LOL!! The trader is still rich and will never see a day in jail. He knows too much and will keep quite and be allowed to spend his 100’s of millions in personal wealth....won’t be allowed to trade anymore, but he’s got friends in the biz.

[Vet_6780]

This story was bogus from the beginning no single trader can move billions past checks and balances that have been in place for decades.

They tried to scapegoat him but he got some attorneys and threatened to tell the real story of how the bank got insolvent.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Punish the monkey, let the organ-grinder go.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Punish the Monkey

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

''Free To Trade'' !
Good yarn. Haven't seen any of his recent works. Pls advise!

Read that! I think I've read 3 of his books. I used to look in the R section every time I went into a bookstore - but there were never any new Ridpath novels. I finally checked online, and read that his books weren't being sold in the US anymore, only in the UK. Sheesh, why??! So I looked on amazon.co.uk, and there they all were. I haven't gotten around to ordering his new ones yet, but it's always in the back of my mind. The ones I read were all excellent. Now that you've reminded me, I'm actually going to put it on my To Do list. < :)