On January 24, 2008, Société Générale, one of the largest French banks, announced an abysmal loss of 4.9 billion euros. This loss is attributed to the actions of a young, unknown trader, not named on the day, but whose identity the general public quickly discovered: Jérôme Kerviel.
Immediately, the world is in turmoil – especially since we are a few months after the subprime crisis: how could a single man commit the sum of 50 billion euros to the stock market? How did these 50 billion turn into 4.9 billion losses? And what was its goal: to threaten the integrity of Société Générale? Destabilize the entire global financial system? Or something else…
Numerous testimonies, including that of Jérôme Kerviel
In four episodes of approximately 45 minutes each, which arrive this Friday on Max, Kerviel: a trader, 50 billion therefore wants to re-explain the ins and outs of the affair, more than 15 years after the facts. The documentary series produced by Fred Garson will be based on numerous testimonies, notably those of Société Générale managers, such as Luc François, head of the equities and derivatives division at the time, or Daniel Bouton, who was at the helm. time the CEO.
If even the former President of the Republic François Hollande comes to pass a head (while the affair broke out under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy), it is obviously the testimony of Jérôme Kerviel which is at the center of the documentary. We rediscover the former trader, from a working-class Breton background, who developed a passion for finance after seeing films like Wall Street by Oliver Stone in 1987. After his studies, he joined Société Générale in the early 2000s before becoming a trader in 2005.
Jérôme Kerviel addicted to taking risks
“I didn’t realize it, but I was addicted”: the series allows us to understand the psychology of Jérôme Kerviel, who presents himself as an addict to risk-taking, who would have taken advantage of the bank’s lack of security to take “positions” (operations on the financial market) increasingly perilous, until the beginning of 2008. As a reminder, Jérôme Kerviel was sentenced to five years in prison, including two years suspended in 2010, a sentence confirmed two years later.
Presenting everyone’s opinions on the trader’s motivations, the documentary is a good refresher on the case, even if its editing abuses the symbolism a little too much. To go further, the director Christophe Barratier had made a fiction film on this scandal, L’Outsiderreleased in 2016 and available on video-on-demand sites.
Kerviel: a trader, 50 billionavailable this Friday, November 29 on Max.
