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The article focuses on the leadership of the business community in France. This small group is very homogeneous, drawn from the graduates of two small schools, the Ecole Polytechnique and ENA. French chief executive officers (CEOs) enjoy more power than their U.S. counterparts. The scandal at the bank Societe Generale created by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, and the lack of blame assumed by its CEO Daniel Bouton have renewed criticism the leaders put themselves above their firms.

The article reports that French police are questioning traders who may have been involved with Societe Generale's $7.1 billion loss, which is the largest loss in history caused by a rogue trader. The questioning suggests that trader Jerome Kerviel was not acting alone, as the bank has previously asserted.

The article focuses on mistakes made by the management of the French bank Societe Generale which allowed employee Jerome Kerviel to create unauthorized and ficticious stock trades which cost the firm over $7 billion. The bank ignored messages of warnings from the Eurex financial exchange. It is said to have encouraged a culture of risk-taking which allowed supervisors to ignore Kerviel's methods as long as they seemed profitable.

The article reports that a study by French finance minister Christine Lagarde will suggest tighter risk-control measures at Societe Generale and other French banks in the wake of the $7.2 losses at Societe Generale created by unauthorized stock trades by employee Jerome Kerviel. The report instructs banking regulators to focus their investigation of the fraud into areas where the bank's control system was found inadequate.

The article reports that the board of directors of the French bank Societe Generale took no action on the offer to resign made by Chief Executive Officer Daniel Bouton, leaving him in his position. Anonymous sources indicated this decision may be a temporary one. Bouton is under pressure to resign due to the $7 billion in losses created though the fictitious stock trades of bank traded Jerome Kerviel.

The article reports that several French politicians, including President Nicolas Sarkozy have indicated they wish Daniel Bouton to resign as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the bank Societe Generale. This was in reaction to the scandal in which bank employee Jerome Kerviel created $7 billion in losses due to fictitious stock trades. An unnamed member of the bank's board of directors said that political pressure to remove Bouton was very strong.

The article reports that the French bank Societe Generale is under increased scrutiny regarding the undocumented stock trades by former employee Jerome Kerviel that resulted in over $7 billion in losses. Kerviel told prosecutors his fictitious trades began in 2005, a year earlier than the bank had stated. This raised questions as to how Kerviel operated without detection. There have been calls for the bank's Chief Executive Officer, Daniel Bouton, to resign.

PARIS -- The trial of Jerome Kerviel, the man accused of causing billions in losses at the French bank Societe Generale, ended Friday with judges and prosecutors conceding that a two-year investigation and three weeks of court hearings had left them no wiser about what had motivated the former trader to make his enormous, unauthorized bets. A three-judge panel will now spend the coming months poring over the testimony of more than 40 witnesses in an attempt to determine whether blame for the scandal should rest solely on the shoulders of one man. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

PARIS -- It took Jerome Kerviel, the celebrity rogue trader who stands accused of losing billions of euros at the French bank Societe Generale, 10 minutes to make it through the scrum of microphones and journalists outside a courtroom Tuesday. The media onslaught on the first day of the opening hearing of his long-awaited trial -- a three-week marathon of cross-examinations and expert hearings -- set the stage for a national event with running commentary on topics as diverse as the body language of the lawyers (celebrities in their own right) to the color of the stripes in Mr. Kerviel's tie (pink). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

PARIS -- When risky bets by the rogue trader Jerome Kerviel had the French bank Societe Generale teetering near collapse in January 2008, Lehman Brothers was still going strong, Bernard L. Madoff was a sought-after money manager, and subprime mortgages had just caught the attention of regulators. Since then, the biggest trading fraud in history has been dwarfed by other financial crises. But Mr. Kerviel's rogue bets, which cost Societe Generale almost 5 billion euros, were in some ways a harbinger of what was to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American lawyers seeking to bring a class-action lawsuit against the French bank Societe Generale over its billions of euros in unexpected losses came to France on Wednesday looking for publicity, and plaintiffs. Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, which specializes in class-action suits, hopes that a Federal District Court in Manhattan will decide to allow French shareholders of Societe Generale to sue alongside their American counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE NEW LAWYERS for Jerome Kerviel, the former trader whose hidden bets cost the French bank Societe Generale nearly 5 billion euros or $7.2 billion, told a judge on Wednesday that he was not the only one engaged in such unauthorized trading. KATRIN BENNHOLD THE GERMAN AUTO PARTS giant, Continental, on Wednesday warily embraced a takeover approach from its smaller rival, the Schaeffler Group, that has set the German corporate world abuzz, but it rejected the current offer as inadequate. CARTER DOUGHERTY [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new lawyers for Jerome Kerviel, the former trader whose hidden bets cost the French bank Societe Generale nearly 5 billion euros or $7.2 billion, told a judge on Wednesday that he was not the only one engaged in such unauthorized trading. Caroline Wassermann, one of six lawyers in a reshuffled defense team, said after a hearing that she and her colleagues had the names of traders at the bank who conducted ''similar practices,'' though not on the same scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Societe Generale, the French banking giant, announced Friday that it would replace its head of investment banking, Jean-Pierre Mustier, in its latest effort to restore a reputation bruised by a trading scandal. The bank hired Michel Peretie, the former chief executive of Bear Stearns in Europe, as head of corporate investment banking to work alongside Mr. Mustier. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

They had been saving their anger ever since the trading scandal at the French bank Societe Generale broke in January. On Tuesday, shareholders were given their first chance to challenge management on a loss of 4.9 billion euros or $7.1 billion -- and there was no more holding back. At the bank's annual meeting, several investors called for the resignation of the chairman, Daniel Bouton, and asked why the head of the investment banking division, Jean-Pierre Mustier, was still in his job. They accused management of transforming the bank into a casino. And, in a sign that class-action lawsuits in New York and France might be gathering pace, they sought restitution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Weak management and insufficient internal risk controls at Societe Generale made it possible for a 31-year-old trader to cause nearly 5 billion euros in losses at the French bank, a report from an internal investigation has concluded. The report, released Friday, also said that the trader, Jerome Kerviel, might have had an accomplice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Serious management failures by immediate superiors allowed a rogue trader at Societe Generale to commit the biggest fraud in financial history, according to an internal report to be released Friday. The report raises questions about whether the trader, Jerome Kerviel, had an accomplice at the bank. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The judges leading the investigation of Jerome Kerviel, the Societe Generale employee blamed for trading losses of nearly 4.9 billion euros ($7.2 billion), are expected to conclude their work by summer, with a trial likely to begin in early 2009, lawyers said Friday. ''So long as there are no surprises, it would not be impossible for the investigative phase to conclude by late June or mid-July,'' said a lawyer representing the French bank, Jean Veil. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]