Another Rogue Trader Surfaces

The New York Times reports that a Renaissance Capital equities trader, identified as one Anton Stenin, 28, is said to have circumvented the Russian investment bank's rules to build up a $130m unauthorised position using funds 'borrowed' from a client account.

Renaissance spokesperson J. Quinn Martin told Bloomberg: 'The bank's risk controls quickly uncovered the the incident, and we took immediate action to mitigate the risk to the firm'. Although there were media reports that the loss was as high as $50m, Martin put the loss at around $10m. The whereabouts of the trader is thought to be unknown.

In the meantime, Reuters reports that shares in Societe Generale fell sharply Monday on rumors that the French bank had taken a bath on structured products. The bank issued a statement deriding the 'malicious rumors' and denying that significant losses had been sustained.

And finally, talking of rogue traders and SocGen, Jerome Kerviel's lawyers met with the bank's external auditors Monday to try and ascertain how much they knew about their client's unauthorized trading, and how much they passed on to the bank. The lawyers are attempting to substantiate Kerviel's claims that SocGen was fully aware of his trading activities, and simply turn a blind eye to it whilst it remained profitable.

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