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Economist.com
Low-Level Société Générale Insider’s Forgeries Cost Bank $7.2 Billion
This week Economist.com reports that Jérôme Kerviel, the Société Générale employee who sparked the world's biggest-ever trading loss, was so low on the bank's totem pole that some didn't consider him a trader at all. That may have been what allowed him to pull it off. According to preliminary inquiries into the trading fraud that cost Société Générale €4.9 billion ($7.2 billion), Mr. Kerviel allegedly placed hundreds of thousands of unhedged real trades on stock-index futures markets. For months, Mr. Kerviel avoided detection because -- even as he allegedly built up massive positions -- he always managed to square his books as a low-level trader in the "Delta One" desk: never make a big profit or loss. When one trade caught the attention of a supervisor last week, and the system collapsed, myriad small losses compounded into a huge financial hole for the bank.
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Computing Magazine
Large Percentage of Emails Found Unusable in Court Cases
Janie Davies reports in last week's issue of Computing Magazine that less than one in four UK businesses are confident that they could rely on email as legal evidence in the event of a harassment or unlawful dismissal lawsuit. While 44 percent said they could not prove whether their emails had been tampered with, 35 percent could not even detect whether or not changes had been made, says a survey by research group Vanson Bourne on behalf of archiving and compliance supplier Forensic and Compliance. Financial services organizations are only slightly better prepared, with at least 45 percent still unable to prove interference with emails, compared with 58 percent of retail, distribution and transport groups.
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TechWorld
Citigroup Pays Up, Big Time, for E-Discovery Software
Apparently, the sub-prime crisis is good news for somebody... Especially if you're a legal discovery software vendor. Autonomy recently scored a $70 million order for "Desktop Legal Hold", one of the products that came into their portfolio with last year's acquisition of e-disvovery specialist Zantaz.
The customer wasn't identified by Autonomy, but insiders say that it's the global bank Citigroup. Autonomy bought Zantaz for $375 million in July, 2007. The company makes products for archiving, compliance and e-discovery. Desktop Legal Hold (DLH) enables customers to quickly identify, set aside and organize documents and emails pertinent to lawsuits. Could it be that Citigroup bought DLH to prep for the onslaught of lawsuits it is facing from investors and others over the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis? Hmmm...
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Gartner Research
Free Download! Gartner's E-Discovery Vendor Market Analysis
Thanks to Guidance Software, who received Gartner's highest rating as a "Strong Positive", you can download Gartner's research note, "MarketScope for E-Discovery and Litigation Support Vendors, 2007", dated Dec. 14, 2007 for free. Among the very interesting findings in the report: "STRATEGIC PLANNING ASSUMPTION(S) By the end of 2008, there will be four viable categories of vendors in the e-discovery market: platform players, review and analysis platforms, collection, preservation and processing and full service outsourcers. By the end of 2008, there will be 25% fewer vendors claiming to have e-discovery functionality."
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