SOCIETE GENERALE - BANKING

Société Générale: rogue trader caused 4.9 bln euro loss

Thursday, January 24, 2008

A "lone trader" was responsible for French bank Société Générale's 4.9 billion euro loss, the company's chairman Daniel Bouton said. The bank has also lost two billion euros in the US subprime crisis. (Report: B.Coll)

Societe Generale said Thursday that a single rogue trader carried out a massive 4.9-billion-euro (7.15-billion-dollar) fraud at the French banking giant.

Trading in the bank's shares was suspended on the Paris stock exchange after the revelation of the fraud along with a two-billion-euro loss stemming from the crisis in US subprime mortgage market.

The bank said the losses cut its 2007 profit to 600-800 million euros from 5.2 billion in 2006 and that it had carried out a 5.5 billion dollar capital increase because of the fraud "and in order to strengthen its capital base."

"I have the duty to inform you that the management of Societe Generale has discovered an internal fraud of a considerable scope, carried out by a member of staff in its financing and investment division," chairman Daniel Bouton said in a statement released on the bank's web site.

The bank announced separately that the fraud was worth 4.9 billion euros and that it had also lost about two billion euros because of the US subprime meltdown.

The new rogue trader has not been named but brings immediate comparisons to Nick Leeson, the British futures trader who lost 1.5 billion dollars at Barings, causing the failure of the venerable British bank in 1995.

Boutin said the Societe Generale trader had been suspended and that legal action would be taken against him.

He said the bank had also fired "executives, including leaders, responsible for the supervision and controls on the operations concerned."

"The transactions which involved the fraud were simple -- taking a position on shares rising -- but hidden using extremely sophisticated and varied techniques," Boutin said.

He added that he only found out about the fraud on Sunday and that the governor of the Bank of France had been informed.

"The loss suffered is very big. All measures were taken on the spot to contain this. The failure of control procedures has been identified and corrected to avoid any new risk of a comparable nature."

Boutin sought to reassure investors despite the crisis, which he described as "sad and regretable."

"In effect, most of its areas, in France and abroad, have continued to give good and sometimes excellent operating results."

Boutin said the capital increase would more than compensate any losses from the fraud and the subprime damage and that it had been fully underwritten on Wednesday.

The chairman insisted that the bank could rebound from the crisis and resume the long years of profits it has known. "I see there, with the support of our shareholders and the engagement of our staff, a profound reason for optimism."

The bank said in a separate statement that its rogue trader had been carrying out what it called "vanilla futures hedging" on European equity markets.

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