UBS “Rogue” Trader: One Trade Away from Banking Armageddon?

The trial of the Swiss bank UBS “rogue” trader Kweku Adoboli began in London last Friday with the prosecution claiming his trading “could quite easily have approached and even exceeded the limits of the bank’s resources,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The prosecution said that at one point, Adoboli’s trading could have racked up nearly US $12 billion in losses; as it was, his trading ended up costing the bank over $2.3 billion in direct losses and another $4 billion or so in share price. It also led to the resignation of then UBS chief executive Oswald Gruebel. [read more..]