Exclusive: Mystery as Société Générale suspends two senior FX staff
The decision by Société Générale’s Corporate & Investment Banking unit to suspend Didier Meyer and Eric Leandri was always going to get tongues wagging. After all, it’s not every day that the global head of spot and option trading, as Meyer was, or the head of structuring Europe and Asia, as Leandri was, are asked to leave the building at the same time. As we reported here on Tuesday, SocGen had almost nothing to say on the matter, other than: “There has been no problem with any client trade or any wrong-doing towards a client in this context, and no financial loss towards a client or the bank.”
There are obviously legal sensitivities involved, but until SocGen clarifies why it took the action, especially if no losses occurred, the departures will remain the subject of speculation – and some of that will be wrong.
Talk in the market is that the trade that led to their suspension was extremely profitable. Well-placed sources elsewhere say that the client is not unhappy with it either. The buzz is that the decision to suspend the two may have been based on an oversight on their part, rather than any deliberate actions, but it was apparently taken at an extremely high level.