Meet Jerome Kerviel, The Poorest Man In the World

There are numerous articles, journals, statistics and data on the richest and wealthiest people in the world. Publications like Forbes and Bloomberg, give us real time data on who the richest person in the world. However on the flip of the coin, there are liltte to zero data on who the poorest people in the world are. If you are like me I’m sure you wondering who the poorest person in the world is and what is he doing to survive? After an extensive travel and research to the  numerous corner of the web, i came across  a man called Jerome Kerviel, who is  regarded by numerous publication as the poorest man in the world. Who is Jerome Kerviel and how did he earn this title.

Jerome Kerviel Bio data

The table below contains more information about the acclaimed  poorest man in the world.

Who Is Jerome Kerviel?

Jerome Kerviel is a French man, who grew up Pont-l’Abbé, Brittany. His father, Charles, was a blacksmith, and his mother, Marie-Josée, is a retired hairdresser.  He got married  in 2008 but got dirvorced later on.

Jerome graduated from the University of Nantes with a bachelor’s in finance. He furthered his academic status by attaneding the Lumière University Lyon 2 in 2000, bagging a  Master degree in Finance with a focus on the organization and control of financial markets.

Kerviel’s former professor at Lyon, Gisèle Reynaud, said in an interview that Kerviel “was a student just like the others, a young man, and he didn’t distinguish himself from the others.”

According to reports, the university’s financial program, which was started in the 1990s with support from France’s larger banks, was intended to prepare students for middle and back office positions in the trading departments of financial institutions. But Jerome had other intentions

How did Jerome Kerviel become the poorest man in the world?

With billion of people living below the poverty less  and many more on less than $1 per day, it practically impossible to determine who the poorest man is in the world is. So how did Jerome earn the title.

Jerome Kerviel was a Junior Trader for his bank’s Delta One business in 2005, which includes program trading, swaps, ETFs, quantitative trading, and index futures. Christian Noyer, the  then  Governor of the Bank of France, praised him as a “Computer Genius.”

The said computer skills, were however  in irresponsible hands as he carried out $73 billion in unauthorized transactions along with computer hacking,  forgeries, and other shady activities

Jerome acquired a stock index futures position of US$73 billion by January 9, 2008. He then began to utilize  these vast sums of money to engage in arbitrage trading, which involves taking advantage of two stocks trading at different prices when they should be trading at the same price.

On January 19, 2008, his bosses discovered illicit trading linked to him. He had howevert  built up massive bets and losses by the time the fraud was discovered, owing the bank $6.3 billion, more than he will ever be able to pay.

As a result of this, Jerome Kerviel becmae the world’s most indebted man, ultimately the poorest person in the world.

Arrest and Trial

After the whole incident Jerome handed himself to French authorities to begin a three-year jail sentence in 2015. He turned himself to the Menton police, he was flanked by a swarm of reporters and supporters.

Although, he admitted to making the unauthorized trades but has argued that the bank turned a blind eye when they went well, but turned against him when they didn’t.

SocGen carried out an internal report that found managers at the bank had failed to follow up on tens of different alarms over Kerviel’s activities. A number of resignations followed, but no other charges were pressed.

More so, his return home is something of an endpoint to a saga that goes from huge unauthorized trades on the eve of the financial crisis to a pilgrimage and papal meeting.

Jerome Kerviel’s Net Worth

Jerome Kerviel has a net worth of -$6.7 billion and he is the poorest man in the world. If the debts he owes to the French bank Societe Generale for fraudulent trading were assets, Kerviel would have become one of America’s top 50 richest persons.

According to SocGen, Kerviel was tasked with identifying differences between the prices of equity derivatives and cash equities and “began creating the phony trades in late 2006 and early 2007; nonetheless, these transactions were relatively small; the fake trading rose in frequency, and scale.”

However, they have accused him of exceeding his power to participate in illicit trades reaching up to €49.9 billion, a sum significantly bigger than the bank’s total market value.

Bank authorities believe that throughout 2007, he had been trading profitably in anticipation of dropping market prices. Kerviel made deliberate losses in trades to balance his early gains in an effort to hide the activity.

The BBC reports that at the start of 2008, the poorest person in the world made €1.4 billion in unreported profits. On January 19, 2008, his employers claim to have discovered illegal trade linked to Kerviel.

The market saw a sharp decline in equities indexes when SocGen closed down these holdings over the course of three trading days starting on January 21, 2008; the losses associated are estimated at €4.9 billion ($7 billion).

Conclusion

Despite the fact that the charges against him carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail, he served less than five months in prison and was freed on September 8, 2014.  

He is currently employed at Lemaire’s consultancy firm as an IT consultant. However, He would have to pay a portion of his wages into a fund for the rest of his life, but given that he will never, ever be able to pay off his vast debt, you might say he is the poorest man on the planet.

However, comaparing his situation to  poor people in undeveloped Countries like Congo and Cambodia, Kerviel may be considered a lucky man. Majority of these people are  hungry and homeless, living on less than on $1 a day with no food, no water, no clothes, and no shelter.

Jerome Kerviel may be the poorest man in the world according to the internet , but there are still billions who can’t even afford basic needs.

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