In the end only one was convicted JeanPierre Mustier

They were two to be suspected. In the end, only one was convicted: Jean-Pierre Mustier. The ex-patron of the funding and investment of the Société Générale Bank was fined by a fine of 100,000 euros made by the sanctions Committee des marchés financiers (AMF) authority. It goes to appeal the decision, according to his lawyer. Suspected of similar facts, the former administrator of the Bank, the American Robert Day, was was cleared by the same court. What raising a few misunderstandings in the financial community, in view of the length of the process - more than two and a half years - and the extent that the matter has taken over the months.

Because the suspicion of breach of insider have emerged at the confluence of two French banking establishment highly destabilizing events: the so-called credit crunch "subprime", with its cohort of impairment of assets; and the now famous Jérôme Kerviel fraud, charged with losing 4.9 billion euros for Société Générale. The facts against the two men are only the first of these two events. Those who Jean-Pierre Mustier relate to the assignment, on August 21, 2007, 6,000 shares Société Générale, whereas he had in his possession, according to the AMF investigators, a privileged information on next potential losses on some slices of derivatives of complex credit - the CDOS of RMBS, among the first financial products to be be collapsed after the bursting of the bubble in the United States.

In detail, its position as leader of the branch of Société Générale market activities took him to ringside for the change of internal model of credit at this time, which was precisely designed to better assess the losses related to the "subprime" products by taking better into account the risks of liquidity - in other words, the case of sharp exchanges between institutions financial instruments. The Commission of the sanctions of the AMF especially emphasizes this point, stating that the establishment of this new internal model of credit "had resulted in no information" and that impairment losses resulting from its application resulted, on January 24, 2008, in a communiqué of the Société Générale reporting impairment losses of EUR 1.1 billion recorded in respect of the devaluation of these same products (CDOS of RMBS).

Step of privileged information

This is not the same for Robert Day, which sold 1.76 million shares of the French Bank between December 19, 2007 and January 18, 2008. Indeed, the judges of the MFA ruled it had not been in possession of information sufficiently detailed to be characterized as "preferred." Three grievances which have been notified are all related to information issued on the Board of Directors of Société générale, September 18, 2007. On that date, well was a change of model State credit, but not in sufficiently specific terms so that they can constitute an information that might give rise to a breach of insider.

The legal niceties that might leave more than one observer speechless. Moreover, the decision did not place a unanimous vote on the part of the sanctions Committee, according to concordant sources. The report made by the rapporteur was even in the sense of a money laundering Jean-Pierre Mustier, which in had welcomed trial Kerviel. A little too fast.