More than the usual host of smokers occupied the front of Société Générale offices in Paris on Wednesday, presumably meaning that more than a few of them knew what came next. The bank's equity derivatives trading desk appeared to be doing business as normal, while unwinding the billions of euros of trades completed by Jérome Kerviel. In short, the SG office was relatively peaceful and showed no real sense of alarm. Considering the scale of the money that has just been lost, what does this mean?
The only thing you can conclude is that losing a whole load of money is a regular event on the trading floor and in fact Nick Leeson - the most notorious rogue trader ever - was speaking sense when he said that after you lose the first US$30,000, then it no longer seems like real money.
Rather than pore over who has given SG awards for its prowess in equity derivatives - it's ok, we have the Telegraph and FT.com to do that rather pointless archive search for us - everything has to stop while it is worked out how this happened. How does a junior trader take positions well beyond those that a head trader at any other bank can take?
And who knew? Is it an accident that SG's most senior employees offered to resign after interrogating their rogue trader last Saturday? What does it mean when the senior management says in a press release issued yesterday that those responsible are now in the firing line?