Barometer of fear: an insider's account of rogue trading and the greatest banking scandal in history - Original PDF
نویسندگان: Stenfors, Alexis
خلاصه: I had gone to India on holiday, and on the second day (it was 17 February 2009) I made a phone call to my manager at Merrill Lynch, who, as it happened, was also away from the office, telling him I wanted to talk. He said he was in a ski lift in Switzerland, and told me that he would call back in two or three hours. When he did, he initiated a conversation that would become the most difficult of my life. I informed him that my trading books were overvalued and had been so since mid-January. I had hoped that this would only be temporary but the markets had continued to move against me. ‘How much are we talking about?’ he asked. ‘It could be 100 million.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘I really don’t know,’ I replied. ‘But now I feel ashamed. I want to apologise.’ Having opened the floodgates, the questioning began. I was interrogated about risk, volatility, hedging, 2008, liquidity, the credit crunch, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, other people’s losses, price movements, my previous boss, Bank of America, bonuses, profits, honesty, 2009, management, pressure, smoothing of profit and loss, exhaustion. Towards the end of our 45-minute conversation he asked: ‘Could this be a momentary lapse of reason?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘This is obviously very serious,’ he said. ‘It could go all the way up to the FSA.’