Got a mortgage and credit card debt? Think you owe a lot of money? However much money you owe, that's peanuts compared to what Jérôme Kerviel owes.
As Matthew O'Brien wrote in Quartz, Kerviel is the world's most indebted man, owing more than $6.3 billion to the French bank Société Générale:
He can earn million-dollar gains without anybody knowing. He can execute make-believe trades by sending fake emails from hacked computers. He doesn’t always lose money. But when he does, he loses more than $6 billion. He is … the most indebted man in the world.
Jérôme Kerviel is learning one of life’s harsher lessons: It stinks to be $6.3 billion in debt. That’s how much his fraudulent trades in 2007 and 2008 cost French bank Société Générale, and how much he has been ordered to pay in restitution—after he gets out of jail in three years. A judge recently upheld these terms on appeal.
Stay risky, my friends?
O'Brien explains the whole thing in this post: Link (Photo: Jacques Brinon/AP)