Banking on standards?

With the newspapers going gaga over the “issue” that might come up if Carla Brunei accompanies her lover the French president to India, the importance of the other French news seems to be subdued. The bank Société Générale has disclosed a loss of $7.2B due to an unapproved trade made an individual. May be the future b-school students will get to study about this guy in his “thirties, very quiet and a loner” rather than the usual stuff about Nick Leeson pushing Barings bank to sale with his $1.4B fraud. The bankers of the queen (Barings) were sold for $1 to ING after Leeson’s fraud became public. Let us see how fate pins on Société Générale.

It is really puzzling to see how fraudsters keep getting better at their work as the banks keep implementing rigid standards. It is another fact of the matter that most standards have been byproducts of some scam or the other. Société Générale has said “His approach was to balance each real trade with a fictitious one”. Isn’t this the same thing that Nick Leeson did 13 years back? Well, probably the specifics of the fraud are different. And surprise surprise, this person has also worked in the back office like Leeson!