When rogue traders get caught, they go to jail -- and sign multi-million dollar book deals

[caption id=“attachment_83686” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  Rogue trading pioneer Toshihide Iguchi’s new book My Billion Dollar Education: Inside the Mind of a Rogue Trader, provides the perfect opportunity to walk down memory lane and take a look at some of the boldest and most disastrous financial market trading related debacles to have taken place in the last few decades.
Let’s start with Iguchi himself. Perhaps one of the earliest rogue traders around, Toshihide Iguchi’s illegal trading activities in New York, beginning in 1984, lost Japanese bank Daiwa over $1.1 billion. He was imprisoned in 1996 and fined $2.6 million. The bank, Daiwa, was fined $340 million and expelled from the US for trying to cover up Iguchi’s activities. Representational image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_83689” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  In 1995, Nick Leeson indulged in huge unauthorised trades that resulted in the downfall of London-based Barings (thanks to losses amounting to $1.4 billion), once banker to the Queen. His own website describes him as, “…the original Rogue Trader whose unchecked risk-taking caused the biggest financial scandal of the 20th century.” Leeson was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, but he is currently rebuilding a career in finance. He published a book on his escapades, rather unimaginatively titled, “Rogue Trader: How I brought down Barings Bank and shook the financial world.” Image: Reuters[/caption]

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[caption id=“attachment_83690” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  In June 1996 , Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp suffered a $2.6 billion loss over 10 years from unauthorised trades by chief copper trader Yasuo Hamanaka. Sumitomo fired Hamanaka, once dubbed “Mr Five Percent” because his trading team was believed to control five percent of the world’s copper trading. He was later jailed for eight years. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_83691” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  Another contender for one of the most devastating rogue traders in financial history is Jerome Kerviel, who single-handedly responsible for bringing down French bank Societe Generale at the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Kerviel lost the bank 4.9 billion, which he was ordered to repay in addition to serving out a three-year prison sentence. A recent court order decried the penalty and recommended a review. Kerviel made the best of his experiences by writing a book titled “Caught in a downward spiral” and was fictionalised as a comic book hero in the French graphic novel “Le Journal de Jrme Kerviel. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_83692” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  Born in Ghana and raised in the UK, Kweku Adoboli gambled away $2.2 billion of employer UBS’s funds in the period between 2008-2011, when he admitted his activities to the company. He was handed a seven year jail sentence after being found guilty on two counts of fraud. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_83693” align=“alignnone” width=“860”]  Bruno Iksil, a French trader, working for JP Morgan in London, lost the US bank $6.2 billion via his unauthorised trades in 2012. Iksil earned the nickname “the London Whale” for the size of the derivatives trades he made in late 2011 and early 2012. After hammering out a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, it was decided that Iksil will not face criminal charges since his testimony helped build cases against his former colleagues. Representational image: Reuters[/caption]