Alea has found this amazing chart, showing Jerome Kerviel’s real P&L at SocGen. The thing that fascinates me is that after a very bumpy ride indeed for most of the year, suddenly Kerviel’s profit remains uncharacteristically and astonishingly static for essentially all of December. Kerviel’s made his monster profit, and he’s simply sitting on it. By sheerest coincidence, the bank then offers him a bonus of €300,000. The minute he starts a new year, he’s off trading again, and immediately falls off a cliff. As Alea writes,
I am wondering why he should get a 300k bonus for a P&L officiel around 0.