Rogue trader once a felon now folk hero in France
Court ruling on whether bank played a role in trading losses is expected on Sept. 23
Jerome Kerviel has spent years insisting he wasn’t solely to blame for the record trading loss that almost sank Société Générale SA. The French legal system that sentenced him to three years in jail is starting to agree.
In the space of two weeks, an employment tribunal awarded Kerviel about half a million dollars for unfair dismissal, while in another courtroom a prosecutor criticized Société Générale for “multiple, long-standing” failings.
“The latest legal news adds grist to my mill,” Kerviel, 39, said in an interview at his lawyer’s office in Paris. “People are realizing that the case isn’t as clear as it seemed.”
Casting himself as a victim of a corrupt financial system has won Kerviel support over the years from people with backgrounds as varied as priests and left-wing politicians.
In the early days, he inspired a comic book and fan club and was featured on T-shirts. Just last week, The Outsider, a movie dramatizing his account of the events, hit French cinemas to mostly positive reviews. Kerviel, who suffers from phobias and panic attacks, said he can’t bring himself to watch the entire film because it brings back bad memories.
The former trader, who entered bogus trades and created fake emails to mask the size of the risks he was taking, maintains that his superiors looked the other way so long as he was making money.
Société Générale contends he acted alone and bears all the blame for the 4.9-billion-euro ($5.4-billion) loss. Until recently, the courts have shown Kerviel little sympathy.
He suffered repeated defeats as verdicts found him solely responsible and served five months of a threeyear prison term for abusing Société Générale’s trust. In 2010, he even faced an order — which was overturned four years later — to repay the entire loss.
The son of an iron worker and a hairdresser, Kerviel grew up in Pont l’Abbe, a small town in Britanny. He didn’t attend one of the elite universities from which French banks typically draw their top financial talent and worked his way up to the trading floor.
During the chaotic hours in January 2008 after the bank unloaded his positions and announced the loss, then-chief executive officer Daniel Bouton described him as a “terrorist.”
Kerviel’s fortunes began to turn in 2014, when France’s Supreme Court overturned the order that he repay the loss. The same year, he captured media attention by walking from Rome — where he approached Pope Francis and shook his hand during a public appearance by the Pontiff in St. Peter’s Square — to France.
The next year, Nathalie Le Roy, the police officer who led probes into Kerviel in 2008 and 2012, said she had been pressured to focus only on evidence that would incriminate him.
A new civil trial — which ran through June 17 — will determine how much, if anything, Kerviel owes the bank, and whether Société Générale must shoulder some of the blame. On the final day, Assistant Public Prosecutor Jean-Marie d’Huy criticized the bank for “a voluntary slackening of the rules with a view toward short-term gain.” At a certain point, “negligence over a long stretch of time becomes intentional, ” he said. The court will rule on Sept. 23.
“All of a sudden it seems that the legal system has heard Jerome Kerviel’s arguments,” said Patricia Chapelotte, founder of communications firm Albera Conseil, which did work for the former trader leading up to his first trial in 2010.
Marion Lambert-Barret, a lawyer for Société Générale, said the recent developments are the result of “constant efforts from Kerviel’s defence team to make sure the case continues to hit the headlines.” The bank is appealing the labour court’s ruling and has maintained it wasn’t aware of Kerviel’s fraud.