Modern banking is peppered with tales of rogue traders blowing holes in their employers’ balance sheets. The case of Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader at France’s Société Générale, is, however, in a class of its own.

When Nick Leeson brought down Barings in 1995 risk management became a more serious business. Banks installed sophisticated blackbox technology to prevent a repeat disaster. While lacking Mr Leeson’s star status, the backroom boy turned “vanilla” futures trader who lost €4.9bn for SocGen shows just how easy it is to dupe these sophisticated systems.