The feeling that the Bank could sink in a few hours

Among a few bankers who reference in market finance, the name of Luc François is regularly. Nothing to wonder at what Morgan Stanley has appointed it recently to head activities shares and derivatives to level world a pole that weighs almost 10 billion dollars a year and a little less than half of total income of the Bank.

If it displays a path without mistakes class player preparation "Ginette", great engineering school, brilliant career in the derivatives at Société Générale in France and abroad, of tennis and browser Emeritus , Luc François does not have the arrogance and aggressiveness that sometimes linked market bankers. With his English gentleman-like, there is almost hard to imagine it in a situation. However, he was, with a few others, one of the builders of the franchise for derivatives actions at Société Générale in the 1980s. And, by his own admission, he would probably still if Jérôme Kerviel had not crossed his path.

After Supélec, and a year at IBM, he joined Société Générale, in 1988, which is already working, his comrade of Sainte-Geneviève, Jean-Pierre Mustier, who will later become pattern of bank financing and investment. A small group of engineers then developed the Department of the stock options, whose success story is now well known. "At the time, we were only dealing on two classes of shares: Paribas and Thomson", he recalled. The pole becomes quickly profitable, and Luc François climbs the ranks. After a position in Philadelphia, he became patron of the European "trading", then again to the Japan for the derivatives in Asia, before being appointed Deputy Director of the division in 1999, derivatives actions. Then, finally, boss of the shares and derivatives in 2007... Twenty years without the temptation to go elsewhere, a rarity in the capital market. "I did not want to go elsewhere for the same thing, believes". And I had a feeling of attachment to what we had built. I was as a pattern of SMEs, viscerally attached to people that I had recruited, trained, helped move forward... with the confidence of management of the Bank during all these years.

The Anglo-Saxon adventure the tent

The story was arrested on 18 January. Or rather, 18, 19 and 20 January 2008, these three days remained etched in its memory, in which he discovers the extent of the fraud committed by Jérôme Kerviel, who was then in his teams. "A terrible, physical shock." The feeling that the Bank could sink in a few hours. "I imagined the worst", he says with a non-feigned emotion. While fraud is known to some people, it was he who oversees the operator to unbuckle the position, kept himself away from the secret. While Asian markets lose 6, it measures the losses that the position will generate, but must make good teams have to doubt anything. The suite is known. "It was logical that I offer my resignation in the wake," he said. It is not the only one to propose to leave the Bank, but it is he who is chosen.

Several houses attempt to lure, but the adventure of the Anglo-Saxon finance attempts. Morgan Stanley the recruits last fall, a little before the bankruptcy of Lehman, the shock of American finance. He saw others.