France orders emergency audit of its banks
The French government orders emergency audit of all French banks after Caisse d’Epargne suffers huge trading loss
The French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, has ordered an emergency
audit of all French banks after one of the country’s biggest savings banks,
Caisse
d’Epargne, suffered a €600m (£466.6m) loss in unauthorised equity
derivatives trading.
A team of four or five traders were caught out, exceeding their limits in the
panic triggered by last week’s stock market crash, by so-called ‘routine control
procedures’. The positions were immediately closed and traders disciplined, the
Guardian reports.
The incident has led to the resignation of Charles Milhaud, Caisse’s
chairman; Nicolas Mérindol, his chief executive officer, and Julien Carmona,
finance director.
As the French banking commission started investigating the affair, Lagarde
vented her frustration, saying she was ‘depressed’ by this latest act of
unauthorised trading by a French bank.
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