News, analysis and personal reflections on the markets & the financial sector

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Société Générale - Jérôme Kerviel: Rogue trader turned film star?


As the old showbiz adage goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Kerviel may be under the cosh now, but better times may lay ahead.

While it's fair to say Jérôme Kerviel probably isn't having the best of times at the moment, what with a criminal investigation and international infamy hanging over him, significantly better times could lay ahead.

If the case of Nick Leeson, the original 'rogue trader' who brought Barings bank down, is anything to go by, mega-bucks could be awaiting Mr Kerviel in the form of a book and film deal.

If the shy, junior trader at the heart of a €5bn scandal at France's second biggest bank chooses to speak out, he could be forever immortalised on the big screen and achieve the wealth and status in his personal life that he seemingly craved at Société Générale.

And even if he doesn't write a book and sell the rights, there are other ways a film production company could tell the extraordinary tale, although not any time soon.
As Douglas Rae, managing director and executive producer of Ecosse Films, explains, a film company could commission a journalist to follow the court case and write a script off the back of that.

"It would be 18 months before you could hope to have a story though," says Mr Rae. "There is nothing to stop you basing it on a fictional episode, following a rogue trader in New York who defrauds a bank out of $4bn."
In 1995 while serving a jail sentence in Singapore, Nick Leeson signed the film rights to his book over to Sir David Frost who had interviewed him. The film was made while Mr Leeson was still in prison, and released one month before his own release.
Since being released from prison he has also made money by doing the rounds on the after-dinner speech circuit and writing a second book on coping with stress. Kerviel could be next to step up to the role of rogue trader turned celebrity...

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