The guillotine dropped this Sunday on the Caisse d’Epargne, one of France’s biggest and most trusted mutual banking groups. The heads of the chairman, chief executive and finance director have all rolled after the bank revealed a €600m trading loss on equity derivatives as a result of a handful of traders allegedly exceeding their limits.

This is not nearly so much as the €4.9bn loss Société Générale announced back in January when the Jérome Kerviel affair was revealed. At the time, there was political pressure for heads to roll at SocGen too, but top management and directors closed ranks and for the most part they stayed in office.