World's most indebted man owes ex employer $6.3bn

The former financial arbitrage trader Jerome Kerviel has been declared as the most indebted man on the planet as he owes his erstwhile employer $6.3 billion.


He can earn million-dollar gains without anybody knowing. He can execute make-believe trades by sending fake emails from hacked computers. He doesn’t always lose money. But when he does, he loses more than $6 billion. He is … the most indebted man in the world.

The amount Kerviel owes to French bank Societe Generale for fraudulent trades made in 2007 and 2008 would make Kerviel one of the 50 richest people in America if those debts were assets.

But Kerviel cannot even begin paying off his debts until 2015, when he is scheduled to be released from prison. Kerviel recently lost an appeal case in which he argued the corruption at Societe Generale was widespread.

Kerviel managed €50 billion ($73 billion in unadjusted dollars) worth of unauthorized trades during his tenure at Societe Generale, using a sophisticated scheme of computer hacking and deceptive trades to deceive the bank.