Salon.com > Greg Keller

Short-selling banned in 4 European countries

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:33:00 +0000

France, Italy, Spain and Belgium are banning short-selling on select stocks amid efforts to calm market turmoil that has sent bank shares gyrating wildly and aggravated worries about Europe's huge debts.

The European Union's markets supervisor, the ESMA, announced the move late Thursday night after boosting surveillance of stormy markets earlier in the day. The move capped two days of whipsaw trading that saw French banks' market value fall and rise by billions of euros.

In a short sale, a trader hopes to make a profit by betting on the decline in the price of a share. The practice has been blamed for contributing to market volatility.

The ESMA said in a statement that the four countries "have today announced or will shortly announce new bans on short-selling or on short positions" as of Friday.

The French market regulator, the AMF, announced late Thursday that it is banning for 15 days net short-selling on 11 stocks, including those of banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole and leading insurers.

Belgium's market authority said it would ban short-selling on financial shares such as leading banks and insurers as of Friday. Belgium had already banned naked short selling, basically a bet on a decline in the price of a share without borrowing the share, since August 2008.

G-8 leaders to marshal support for Arab nations

Wed, 25 May 2011 14:36:35 +0000

Arab uprisings are pushing aside deficits and austerity as the biggest worry of the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations this year.

President Barack Obama and the other leaders will seek to marshal their combined economic might behind the grass-roots democracy movements that have swept the Arab world -- and driven away tourists and investors.

Egypt and Tunisia, where popular revolts this year overthrew authoritarian regimes, want to show G-8 leaders and international financiers that they are still sound investment destinations -- which might be a tall order as the future shape and policies of their governments remains unclear.

The discussions starting Thursday in the chic Normandy resort of Deauville will see the host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, bring together the heads of wealthy nations for what one of Sarkozy's top advisers describes as "the founding moment" of a partnership between the G-8 and the Arab countries.

That partnership may be strained, however, by tensions over how to handle Libya's rebel movement and entrenched leader Moammar Gadhafi. NATO appears to have no exit strategy, and efforts to oust Gadhafi remain elusive.

France’s Christine Lagarde formally announces IMF bid

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:12:10 +0000

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announced Wednesday that she will seek the top job at the International Monetary Fund, a candidacy that has widespread support across Europe.

Lagarde had remained silent about whether she wanted the job, and said she came to the decision after "mature reflection" and consultating with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"If I'm elected I'll bring all my expertise as a lawyer, a minister, a manager and a woman" to the job, she said.

The IMF's last managing director, Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quit last week after he was accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid.

Many European countries, including Germany and Britain, have offered their backing to a candidacy by Lagarde to run the IMF, which provides billions in loans to shore up the world economy.

She indicated she would not focus exclusively on Europe. "No zone has been spared by the financial crisis," she said. "I want to get the biggest possible consensus for my candidacy."

The IMF has traditionally been run by a European, while the World Bank has been run by an American. But representatives of major developing nations on the IMF's board issued a joint statement on Tuesday urging the lending agency to abandon that practice.

France fines Google over Street View privacy breach

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:19:00 +0000

Google received its first ever fine for improperly gathering and storing data for its Street View application on Monday when it was penalized by France's privacy watchdog.

The euro100,000 ($141,300) penalty -- the largest ever by French body CNIL -- sanctions Google for collecting personal data from Wi-Fi networks -- including e-mails, web browsing histories and online banking details -- from 2007 to 2010 through its roaming camera-mounted cars and bicycles.

The fine is the first against Google over the data-gathering, which more than 30 countries have complained about. At least two other European countries are considering fines, while some others have ruled against penalizing Google.

Google Inc. has apologized and says it will delete the data.

"As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks," Google's Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer said in an e-mailed statement. "As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities."

Google has two months to appeal the fine. It hasn't yet decided whether it will, a company spokesman said.

“Rogue” French trader must pay $6.7 billion for fraud

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:43:00 +0000

Former Societe Generale SA trader Jerome Kerviel was convicted on all counts Tuesday in one of history's biggest trading frauds, sentenced to three years in jail and ordered to pay the bank a mind-numbing euro4.9 billion ($6.7 billion) in damages.

The ruling marked a huge victory for Societe Generale, one of France's most blue-blooded banks, which has worked to clean up its image and put in place tougher risk controls since the scandal broke in 2008.

The 33-year-old former futures index trader stood expressionless as the court convicted him of all charges and pronounced a five-year sentence with two years suspended. Kerviel was found guilty on charges of forgery, breach of trust and unauthorized computer use for covering up bets worth nearly euro50 billion between late 2007 and early 2008.

In a stunning blow, the court also ordered Kerviel to pay the bank back the euro4.9 billion that it lost unwinding his complex positions in January 2008 -- a punishment he would almost certainly be unable to pay.

There were audible gasps and surprised looks when presiding judge Dominique Pauthe read out the damages to a packed courtroom of 150 reporters, court officials and members of the public.