Jérôme Kerviel Jérôme Kerviel Jérôme Kerviel (; born 1977) is a French trader who was convicted in the 2008 Société Générale trading loss for breach of trust, forgery and unauthorized use of the bank's computers, resulting in losses valued at €4.9 billion. Société Générale characterizes Kerviel as a rogue trader and claims Kerviel worked these trades alone and without its authorization. These assertions have been met with skepticism by some of Kerviel's former colleagues and acquaintances, as well as by some members of the news media. Kerviel had told investigators that his trading behavior was widespread at the company and that making
Jérôme Kerviel Générale described Kerviel as "not a star". Kerviel earned a bonus of €60,000 on top of a €74,000 salary in 2006, considered modest in terms of the salaries paid to traders in the financial markets. He had hoped for a €600,000 bonus for 2007 and would have received at least half that amount. The bank states that Kerviel was assigned to arbitrage discrepancies between equity derivatives and cash equity prices, and "began creating the fictitious trades in late 2006 and early 2007, but that these transactions were relatively small. The fake trading increased in frequency, and in size". Bank officials