SocGen 'glitch' leaves trader in limbo

A former Hong Kong-based Societe Generale trader claimed he was fired and said the French lender should share the blame for failing to detect his risky bets.

"Instead of taking responsibility of the lapse in their risk system and not identifying the trades at the right time they fired me and terminated my contract," Kavish Kataria, a trader on the bank's Delta One desk who left last year, said in a LinkedIn post yesterday.

It marks the first time the trader has spoken out about the events.

Kataria left along with team head Ken Ng after an internal review of the transactions, Bloomberg News reported this week.

While SocGen didn't lose any money, the trades could have cost the Paris-based lender hundreds of millions of dollars had an intense market downturn occurred.

Kataria had bet on volatility staying low across Indian stock-market indices, people familiar with the matter said, a strategy that involved dealing in options.

SocGen's risk managers failed to pick up on the trades due to a glitch.