Employee shareholders at Societe Generale said yesterday they had started legal action following a multibillion-dollar rogue trader scandal at the French bank.
Employees and former employees, represented by the association ASSACT SG, form the bank's largest shareholder, holding around 10 percent of its capital and more than 10 percent of voting rights.
The association said it was "its duty to contribute to shedding light on the recent disappointment of which all Societe Generale shareholders are victim, notably employees and former employees."
"We are filing suit because we want to be kept informed of the affair's progress," said its head Patrice Leclerc, criticizing a "lack of transparency due to the fact Societe Generale staff are not represented on the board."
Leclerc stressed his association did not want to single out rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, who is being investigated over the losses of 4.8 billion euros (US$7.1 billion) announced by the bank last Thursday.
But he criticized the fact that around 50 people in the bank's investment division earned more than its chairman, Daniel Bouton.
"These excesses are no guarantee of good management and our members want reason to prevail," he said.
Already, three groups of Societe Generale minority shareholders have filed suit alleging insider trading and manipulation of share prices in relation to two major share sales this month by Societe Generale board member Robert Day.
The French financial regulator AMF said on Tuesday it had opened an investigation into share sales in the days before the rogue trade scandal emerged.
Bouton also faced increasing pressure from French officials to answer for the rogue trader disaster ahead a meeting yesterday of its board of directors.
As questions multiplied over Societe Generale's failure to prevent the disaster, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde stressed on Tuesday it was "up to board members" to decide on Bouton's future.
"Societe Generale is in crisis," she said, adding that "the board members are there to decide whether or not the person in charge is the best one to steer the ship or if a change of captain is needed."
The head of the French Senate finance committee, Jean Arthuis, went further: "I don't think Bouton has any choice but to leave."
Societe Generale's board turned down the 57-year-old Bouton's offer of resignation last week, after the colossal losses were announced, asking him to steer the bank through the crisis.
One of the best paid French executives, with a salary of 3.3 million euros in 2006, Bouton said he would forego six months' pay and reaffirmed on Monday that his offer to resign was still on the table.
But as the French government stepped in to warn market predators away from the crisis-hit bank, seen increasingly as a takeover target, the decision to keep Bouton in place came under scrutiny.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS