Société Générale structured a $1billion (€690 million) bet on its own shares for Libya's sovereign wealth fund in the wake of the Jérôme Kerviel fraud, the Financial Timeshas reported.
Documents seen by the FT show the transaction – the Libyan Investment Authority’s biggest investment in five years – had lost 71 per cent of its value by mid-2010.
The authority entered into the transaction in early March 2008, barely a month after Mr Kerviel’s €50 billion of rogue trades left the bank with losses of €5 billion. At the time SocGen was struggling to reassure investors and plug a hole in its balance sheet. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011
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