SoGen is reporting a fraud that will easily top what was surely the biggest, when Nick Leeson single-handedly took down the old-line firm, Barings.
If I remember right - and I could be mistaken, Leeson bought more-and-more calls and financed it by selling more-and-more puts. [!!} This guy appears - so far - to have not been nearly so spectacularly brazen ...
Press release puts it at $7.14 billion. I'm so glad that they didn't round down to seven, aren't you? ["We now have an accurate accounting of the fraud" - LOL].
The loss was bigger than the GDP of 64 nations.
The name on this one is Jérôme Kerviel, although the bank has declined to name him. (Like Leeson at the time, his whereabouts are currently a mystery).
NYTimes:
In 1995, Nick Leeson, a trader in Singapore, incurred a loss of $1.8 billion by making $27 billion of bad bets on Japanese markets, bringing down the venerable British bank Barings in the process.
In 1998, Yasuo Hamanaka, once the chief copper trader at the Sumitomo Corporation, was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to hiding $2.6 billion in trading losses. He admitted to lying and forging documents as his losses snowballed while he bought a million tons of copper over a decade in a bid to sustain prices.
In 1998, Yasuo Hamanaka, once the chief copper trader at the Sumitomo Corporation, was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to hiding $2.6 billion in trading losses. He admitted to lying and forging documents as his losses snowballed while he bought a million tons of copper over a decade in a bid to sustain prices.
