back to article France's €4.9bn rogue trader gets IT job

French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, who cost Société Générale €4.9bn (£3.8bn), has got himself a new job as a computer consultant. Kerviel was released on bail in mid-March and joined the consultancy in April. Kerviel originally worked in the bank's back office before becoming a trader. His spokesman told AP: "Jerome is a …

COMMENTS

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  1. Mark Broadhurst
    Thumb Down

    Like IT needs another cowboy consultant.

    He wont last a week.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jeeeeeezzz

    You couldn't make this fucking stuff up.

  3. Tawakalna
    Unhappy

    so does this mean...

    ..that the directors of Northern Rock can become IT consultants to the UK Government? Maybe they have already, it would help to explain the shambles that Gordo and his pals have got us into. Mind you, as El Reg reported a while back, the abominable and incompetent Patricia Hewitt, former Blurrite Health Minister, loathed by health practitioners but loved by management consultants and outsourcers, got a nice phat 60K+ a year job as a non-exec director of BT, which shoorly wasn't a reward for all the highly profitable NHS spine work that she bunged BT's way for them to right royally frak up. Shoorly not.

    So don't worry, senior directors and managers, if you b*lls up in the private sector, don't worry, just get on Gordo's public sector gravy train and you'll be just fine, Govt contracts a-plenty to over-promise and under-deliver and rake off a tidy sum from the muggins taxpayer, Joe Public.

    (I've worked in the NHS and other public sector institutions and left to go into the private sector because I just couldn't cope with the incompetence, nepotism, graft, and corruption in the *streamlined and efficient* Noo Labour public sector.)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    still hiring?

    Are they still hiring? I never crashed a major financial institution but I did have a few auto accidents when I was a teenager.

  5. Solomon Grundy

    Resume

    This just proves what I've been saying for years. Your resume isn't important, it's all about how you market and handle yourself.

  6. Steve Medway
    Thumb Up

    Now that's what I call a real BOFH!

    Hmmnnn,

    Lets give him credit where credit's due.... He was actually making a profit before someone got shit scared and pulled the plug on his oppo....

    Now the BOFH has a new challenger! The beancounters will be shit scared of him...... He should meet up with Simon and the PFY and work out a new scam!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Mark Broadhurst

    Obviously you are jealous. Given how incompetent most IT people are, and his demonstrated abilities, he might be useful.

    BTW: The term “cowboy”, in American English where the term comes from, is not a pejorative, it’s a complement. It means someone of strong character who does the right thing even when surrounded by weaklings who do the wrong thing because that’s the consensus or easy thing to do. That’s something dumbass Europeans can’t get through their tiny brains. But then, their tiny brains is why basically nothing of significance in IT ever came out of Europe. Microprocessors, RAM, hard drives, CRTs, LCD displays, Fortran, C & C++, BASIC, UNIX, DOS, Windows etc. – all American inventions. And what did not get invented in America (like Flash), was invented in Japan.

  8. heystoopid
    Paris Hilton

    Who Cares ?

    Who cares ?

    What the stock holders and the French government should really do is sack the entire board of directors and the external auditors as they are truly crap and mostly asleep at the wheel at the best of times !

  9. R Callan

    AC I call BS

    Nothing in IT came from Europe?

    Computers: European

    CRT's (cathode ray tubes): Invented by Ferdinand Braun, a German. Germany is in Europe.

    Transistors: There is some evidence that the idea (and patents) for transistors was first put forward by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld and in 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor. Legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that Shockley and Pearson had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles. Integrated circuits (CPU's?) are only many transistors on one chip.

    RAM: first made at Birmingham University using CRT's. Birmingham is in the UK (not Abalama).

    Please do some research before making sweeping derogatory statements! Wikipedia, for all its faults, is a useful first place to look.

  10. Grant Mitchell
    Linux

    @AC

    As it's already been pointed out, A _lot_ of IT/Computer innovations/inventions came from Europe. Yes, Windows came from the US, keep it, Linux came from Europe, I'd rather us it ;).

    Anyway, The Register comes from Europe, so we'll use the European definition of cowboy thanks. I mean, it's not like you yanks can complain about a few misuses of your vocabulary, considering how much you've mangled ours!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    cowboy

    A cowboy is a person who looks after cows.

    Where are you from? In the US a cowboy also has the same meaning as in the UK - a reckless person.

    You're an idiot. Especially if you don't know the computer is a European invention, never mind the other ones.

  12. trackSuit

    missing Questions

    Was Jerome Kerviel paid by a large bank to bring 'SocGen lost serious credibility as a result of the loss' into disrepute? Or will he be paid later, in a few years' time, as a reward/gesture of services rendered? Does he have a personal Swiss bank account or similar? Would a large bank do something like that, even? Pure speculation, though to wonder would be QuITe normal for an Inquiring mind, would it not?

  13. Ishkandar

    Set a thief to catch a thief !!

    Nowt a truer word said !! Good luck to him !! I'm sure he will be very good at his new job of "poacher turned gamekeeper" !!

  14. Steen Hive
    Boffin

    @AC++

    Bjarne Stroustrup was born and bred in Aarhus which is in Denmark, which is not in Sweden, which is not the capital of Austria, by the way.

  15. Neil Davis
    Stop

    Re:@Mark Broadhurst

    Hey Homer, check this out:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display#Brief_history.

    You yanks *did not* invent computing.. (Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Niklaus Wirth, Just like you didn't invent jet engines or rocket propulsion.

    And lest we should forget, if it wasn't for Europe, the USA would not exist. get over it.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Anonymous dips**t

    Nothing of significance ever came *from* Europe, yeah,I'd agree with that. Tell me, anonymous coward, where were your forebears from?

    Windows? Yeah, you can have that one.

    Linux, Hmm, where was that Torvalds bloke from again?

    Paris, she's the epitome of ignorant, tiny minded America.

  17. Jo
    Gates Horns

    bash em yeah

    I love how some of these comments escalate into Yank Bashing. Hell, we should introduce it as a new event at the London Olympics. There would be plenty of countries willing to participate

  18. Chewy

    @AC

    Er try tinternet for a start - you lot might have funded it with your huge military budget though

  19. James Condron

    So What?

    See a fair few comments saying the guy shouldn't be allowed etc., but clearly the guy has the knowledge and the insight into the way not only these systems work, but how someone would attack them- Best guy for the job, i'd say.

  20. TeeCee Gold badge
    Go

    Why are we surprised?

    AFAIR, Jerome Kerviel used to work in IT for Societe Generale (you can put your own accents in here if you want to), where he worked on their compliance and control systems. When he became a trader he thus knew exactly how all the things worked that would alert to excess exposure and how to avoid / work round them.

    Having screwed up big time in his new job, he's gone back to the old one.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Screwed up?

    That has yet to be determined. I've heard people who know about these sorts of mechanisms opine that he was actually doing fine, but his superiors lacked the balls to back his position and took him out of the loop and liquidated the position he had held at a loss. Had they hung on another little while, his position would have returned *another* billion-magnitude profit, just like he was predicting.

    And yeah, he worked in IT before and moved into trading. Since he can't trade he's returned to his old trade.

  22. Richard Thomas

    @ Mr "Everything good came from the US of A and don't you forget it"

    You forgot to mention "We saved your asses in two world wars" etc etc. Can't have a proper anti-europe merkin rant without those words I'm afraid, epic fail...

  23. Pyros

    A request

    Can you direct your Yank-bashing more to the north? Many of us in Florida already get lumped in with the rednecks and old geezers--we're mostly sensible (aside from Jeb Bush,) and still think the Conch Republic was great idea, in general.

    You may continue with the taunting in their general direction, please. :)

  24. Graham Wood

    @Neil Davis

    Agree with most of the sentiment, but really - get a grip.

    "And lest we should forget, if it wasn't for Europe, the USA would not exist. get over it."

    Do you reckon that Mr Columbus built it, rather than finding it with lots of people already there?

  25. Ishkandar

    @trackSuit

    Sir, you are sooo behind the times. Swiss, or even Liechtenstein, bank accounts are no longer secret !! Try the Cayman Islands or Curacao (ex-Dutch Antilles) !!

    @Pyros - Weren't you guys supposed to be "Rebs", not "Yanks" ?? Not that I know much about that place except for the fact that Ol' "Hickory" Jackson fought off the Brits in the Battle of New Orleans and that the Congreve rockets were used for the first time in anger, which led to that line in your National Anthem about the "rockets' red glare" (Hollywood and Major Richard Sharpe notwithstanding) !! Or have I got that wrong ??

    @Graham Wood - At the risk of being pedantic, Chris Colombo "discovered" Hispaniola !! It was Amerigo Vespucci who "discovered" America, hence that stupid name !! Who cares about a bunch of inconvenient natives running around that place !!

    I wonder what would have happened if it was Pizzaro who "discovered" that place first ?? Would it now be called Pizzaria ?? And, God forbid, that is should be Ponce de Leon who was there first !! The innuendos will be endless !!

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