From New York Magazine: Although JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon
did not pin the "egregious and self-inflicted mistakes" that led to
$2 billion in losses on any one person, warning signs about the big risks last
month pointed to an easygoing trader named Bruno Michel Iksil, known playfully
as "the London Whale." Iksil, also called "the White Whale"
and "Voldemort" by wary counterparts, is a "low-profile"
French trader working for the company's Chief Investment Office out of London,
according to The Wall Street Journal. There, he prefers to wear black jeans
without a tie, and has been making about $100 million a year working with
credit-default swaps. But his huge gambles recently on corporate derivatives
had hedge funds betting against him, with one Bank of America trader telling
clients, "Fast money has smelt blood." Now that the bank is bleeding
everywhere, it's largely on Iksil.
Despite his reputation as bearish in the past —
"sometimes criticizing colleagues as too optimistic on markets," the
Journal reported — the Whale turned way bullish lately, trading so hard that he
may have single-handedly moved the index. At the time, Dimon insisted that
chatter about the trading was a "tempest in a teapot," and that the
deals were safe and by the book. "The CIO balances our risks," said
CFO Doug Braunstein. "They hedge against downside risk, that’s the nature
of protecting that balance sheet." With his bets all over the news and his
bosses well aware, the Whale was anything but a rogue trader.
Iksil reportedly stopped making trades in early April, but
when the second-quarter losses were announced yesterday, all eyes went back to the
Whale…
Don't stop now; it's just getting interesting. Go to http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/jpmorgan-london-whale-bruno-iskil-2-billion-loss.html
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