Crises often create heavy social tensionsHe has obtained 3 with his score of 2856So far the Fed has acquired 177 billion in Treasury securitiesThe Accor Group is not left in the renovationsThis type of rule has never solved any problemGovernment bond yields decreased by 4 to 3In Russia consumers are still novices and candidThis is a management lesson that I will not forgetFind the articles of the series of summer onCréaplast achieved last year a turnover of 580Repeatedly, the head of State is was surprised that the President of the Société Générale has not resigned following the Kerviel case. In doing so, it was a fairly general problem, responsibility, in a complex organization, officials of the control this control failure. On this issue, the Kerviel case constituted a particularly interesting case. Because, clearly, the actions of Jérôme Kerviel produced disastrous effects, a loss of EUR 4.9 billion, because of the shortcomings of the system of control of Société Générale.
From the beginning of the "case", these deficiencies were plotted. The Governor of the Bank of France, the authors of the report requested by the Minister of the economy, the Ad Hoc Committee of three directors to follow the crisis successively pointed out the serious shortcomings of the system.
The Governor of the Bank of France, shortly after the outbreak of the "case", found that "the internal control system was not worked as it should and that controls that had worked would not always not the subject of appropriate follow-up. The "Lagarde report" confirmed this first diagnosis and suggested a number of basic measures aimed at strengthening internal control; He advocated notably to establish a "Chinese wall" between "front" (services who spend stock exchange orders) and "middle" and "back-office" (the administrative and accounting services that deal with), protect the access codes of systems, control of the nominal value of the operations of traders (and not only the net balance of these transactions), follow the cash flows generated by operations and monitor "atypical behaviour."
The progress of the Special Committee report, while stressing the ability of the "trader", made the same diagnosis. According to this report, the absence of identification of fraud can "be explained by the effectiveness and the variety of the techniques of concealment used by the fraudster, on the other hand by the fact that operators expand not systematically their checks, finally by the absence of some controls that were not planned and that would have been likely to identify fraud." In particular, it seems that the internal audit of the Bank system has produced a number of alerts that have been ignored, underestimated or ignored by the leaders of the control, starting with the superiors of the trader.
This observation of the failure of the system of control of Société Générale has also led to invest quickly in its development. As of February 11, 2008, three weeks after the outbreak of the case, the President unveiled a plan to better combat fraud providing improved controls on transactions in the rooms of markets and a strengthening of computer security.
Finally, and independently of the personal liability of Jérôme Kerviel on which justice will decide, one of the questions that this case is the following: the control in an organization should they be considered as non-responsible for the events that they have not been able, through ignorance or negligence, prevent Could not be more tricky question. Indeed, the responsibility of the control in an organization is a widely shared responsibility between multiple services and multiple people, so everyone is ultimately responsible for little. In addition, this Division and this dilution of responsibility often result a reduction of the vigilance of each controller. It said that what could escape us will be always identified by someone else. It is therefore difficult, than look for a scapegoat, to clearly identify a leader who would be more than the others and to individualize a possible penalty.
He remains there as a paradox in the fact that those responsible for controlling how others assume their tasks and duties escape for their out of control and sanctions of their responsibility. By resigning, albeit belatedly, the President of the General symbolically assumes corporate liability of the Bank in the case that opposes it its former trader. It was no doubt, given the complexity of the problem, the only way the collective responsibility of the leaders of the control in a complex organization. Not guilty but responsible for all.
