French Rogue trader cashed in on 7/7 bombings

[TonyGosling]

Rogue trader cashed in on 7/7 bombings

From The Times
January 31, 2008
Patrick Hosking and Miles Costello

Jérôme Kerviel claims to have got his first taste of unauthorised trading after making a €500,000 profit as a result of the London bombings 2½ years ago.

Mr Kerviel told investigators that he had placed a bet that the share price of the German insurer Allianz would fall. It paid off in July 2005 when the Tube attacks, which killed 52 people and injured more than 700, triggered a sharp fall in share prices across Europe.

“My first experience of this kind goes back to 2005, when I took a position on Allianz shares, betting on a drop in the market,” Mr Kerviel said in comments published in Le Monde and confirmed as genuine by a judicial offical. “It so happened that a little later the market fell as a result of the attacks on London and it was a jack-pot of €500,000,” he said.

Kerviel said that he created a fictitious operation to conceal his winnings, which proved to be the start of a spiral of bets and cover-ups that ended with losses of €4.82 billion for the French bank Société Générale last week. ........

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/bankin g_and_finance/article3279531.ece