Top 10 Rogue Traders
Published on March 24, 2008 - 69 Comments
A rogue trader is a trader who acts independently of others - and, typically, recklessly - usually to the detriment of both the clients and the institution that employs him or her. In most cases this type of trading is high risk and can create huge losses.
“Since the average dealer now sits at a desk straight out of the Space Shuttle - and in many cases is relatively inexperienced and working under considerable pressure - mistakes are inevitable.
In May last year, London’s FTSE 100 index dropped by more than 2%, after a trader typed £300m, instead of £30m, while selling a parcel of shares.
In 1998, in the biggest incident of its kind ever, a Salomon Brothers trader mistakenly sold £850m-worth of French government bonds, when he carelessly leaned on his keyboard.
And at the end of 2001, shares in Exodus, a bankrupt internet firm, jumped by 59,000% when a rogue trader accidentally bid $100 for its shares, at a time when its value was 17 cents.” (BBC)
This is a list of the top 10 rogue traders, in no particular order.
Rogue trader Jerome Kerviel was a quiet loner, whose disastrous deals on the European markets cost his bank a massive £3.5 billion. The more money 31-year-old Kerviel lost the more he gambled - which would have earned him the title of an incompetent mug in conventional betting circles. But this gambler’s losses were on an epic scale - dwarfing the £700 million fraud by British trader Nick Leeson, who broke Barings Bank in London in 1995.





