Thursday, December 08, 2011

John Corzine: I Buy Your Story

So today, John Corzine broke his silence and stated that he was shocked that multiple hundreds of millions of dollars were missing. And you know what, I buy it. Its a believeable story.

What I find unbelievable, and quite frankly negligent is this; Why was this ultra experienced senior executive running his firm with such weak compliance and monitoring of trading and accounting? Especially with the history of such scandals over the last decade or so. Remember Barings Bank and Nick Leeson or Jérôme Kerviel and Société Générale. These are repeated failures of compliance and monitoring which have resulted in multiple billions of dollars lost because nobody was watching the till.

In short, I don't necessarily think John Corzine is a crook, but rather an incompotent CEO. At least until proved otherwise.

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