French bank reveals bad debt loss
558722
French bank Natixis reports a 1.2bn euro write-down of exposure to bad US mortgage debt, sending its shares down 14%.
586052
HVB Bank, the second largest bank in Germany, said it would post a loss for 2004 after writing down 2.5 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for its real estate loans portfolio.
456201
PARIS, Feb. 4 -- French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde gave Societe Generale a mild rebuke Monday in a report that largely backs up the bank's account of how it lost $7.1 billion last month in the largest trading scandal in banking history.
409785
Business & money: French desperate to keep bank out of foreign hands
160439
PARIS, Jan. 29 -- The 31-year-old trader accused of causing $7.1 billion in losses at France's Societe Generale bank told police investigators that his financial deals were so big that his bosses had to know about them, according to transcripts published Tuesday on two French Web sites.
435182
Wall Street's most important investment banks amassed about $5 billion in losses from bad loans in three months due to the credit crunch that has been squeezing the financial system.
114455
Business & money: Jerome Kerviel speaks about the row over SociÃ©tÃ© GÃ©nÃ©rale's multibillion euro losses
279363
The bank said it lost about $854 million, exceeding analystsâ fears about how badly it would suffer from its bad bets on subprime mortgages.
619030
BNP Paribas confirmed on Thursday that it  was studying a possible bid for Societe Generale, as its fellow  French bank reeled from rogue trading losses and France warned  off would-be foreign bidders.
18429
Trader blamed for â¬4.9bn loss at SociÃ©tÃ© GÃ©nÃ©rale being questioned, reports say
611472
Societe Generale faces growing  embarrassment after it emerged the French bank was warned last  year about the suspect activities of Jerome Kerviel and its key  fraud accusation against the 31-year-old trader collapsed.
424758
Societe Generale (SocGen) , hit by massive losses it blamed on rogue trades, braced for fresh criticism on Tuesday after a government report highlighted major failings in its risk controls.
108066
Credit Suisse said on Tuesday it was writing down a further 2.85 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros) worth of assets linked to the US housing market due to adverse conditions in the first quarter.
348960
The huge losses reported by French bank Soci?t? G?n?rale, apparently caused by a rogue trader with inside knowledge of the bank's procedures, don't necessarily point to an IT systems failure but rather to poor management of those systems, analysts say.The bank has accused 31-year-old employee Jerome Kerviel of creating a fraudulent trading position in the bank's computers that ultimately caused it to lose around ?4.9 billion ($7.3 billion).Kerviel achieved this by, among other things, misappropriating computer passwords, the bank said. It has revealed few other technical details of what caused the losses.Management of passwords, including rescinding the old passwords of employees who move to different positions within the bank, or modifying the level of access those passwords allow, is often a task given to the lowest-level IT worker."It's dull and routine 99 percent of the time, but a vital backstop," said Bob McDowall, senior analyst at the TowerGroup. Senior IT managers should conduct more frequent reviews of password policies, he said.In some cases, it may not have been the security of the passwords themselves that posed a problem, but rather the access those passwords allowed, said Ian Walden, professor of information and communications law at Queen Mary, University of London.Organizations tend to think of access as being binary in nature: you get access to it all, or you don't, Walden said. In reality, there are many more levels of access. "In modern, complicated systems, the granularity has to be much more sophisticated."To make the best use of systems with advanced access controls, the IT department must have a thorough understanding of how the business works and where there is risk.IT departments and business managers have yet to find a way to wrap security into business processes so it is not an impediment, Walden said."IT in a company is not given a sufficient status," Walden said. "What's shocking is you would have thought that the financial sector was more sophisticated than this, but it still tends to be the case that security is an add-on and a block, something you've got to live with but you don't have to like, rather than being viewed as an integral part of the business structure."Workers should be able to do their job without having to share passwords when someone goes on holiday, and the IT department should not make it harder for people to perform their duties, Walden said.In one extreme example at telecommunications company BT, one employee didn't have the right to use a computer at all, but he found it helped him do his job, Walden said."By the time he was found, he had 90 passwords of different employees," Walden said.It's possible that financial institutions could use biometric systems, such as fingerprint scanners, to provider an added layer of security, McDowall said. Those systems, however, are expensive. Also, the sometimes-finicky fingerprint scanners may not be appropriate in a frantic trading environment, McDowall said.Questions remain about how Kerviel's losses could be so high given his job as relatively low-level trader. But Kerviel's career progression in 2005 from the bank's back office to the front office -- where he would have had access to client accounts -- is also troubling since he would have gained greater knowledge on the bank's inner controls, McDowall said.As an arbitrage trader, Kerviel made money off price differences between different financial products. Soci?t? G?n?rale said Kerviel balanced real and fake trades in order to avoid setting off internal alarms.Kerviel has been described in some press reports as a computer genius. However, most attackers used unsophisticated methods for exploiting systemic vulnerabilities in applications, processes and procedures, according to the 2005 "Insider Threat Study" by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.That report notes that sophisticated tools are also used in some attacks, which would demand that internal financial systems need to be designed on a more defensive footing.Programmers should code under the assumption that a hacker or employee will use every means in order to break in, said Ben Rothke, senior security consultant at BT's International Network Services."The underlying issue is that many systems are designed to stop honest people from making mistakes, but do not take into account those with malicious intent," Rothke said.It makes insider jobs one of the toughest to defend against. The psychological profile of an insider tends to be a disgruntled employee who feels wronged by the company, according to the Insider Threat Report.That in turn can lead to a suspicious behavior such as staying late at work, which paradoxically might only signal a committed employee."It's always the insider," Rothke said. "It's often harder to steal $10,000 from a bank than $10 million."
227502
The loss of $854 million exceeded fears about how badly the bank was hurt by its subprime mortgage bets.
629102
French bank Societe Generale said Thursday it has uncovered a 4.9 billion euro ($7.14 billion) fraud Â one of history's biggest Â by a single futures trader whose scheme of fictitious transactions was discovered as stock markets began to stumble in recent days.
368913
French bank Societe Generale said Thursday that it has uncovered a $7.14 billion fraud which, combined with a write-down from its subprime exposure, will force it to seek $8.02 billion in new capital.