Adoboli convicted...food for thought...

Kweku Adoboli, the UBS 'rogue trader' in London, was convicted of fraud yesterday...fair enough, looks like he was guilty, yet why is it you never see a headline: "Rogue trader earns bank $2bn"? Not once...ever! A sceptical person might conclude that whenever unauthorised trading makes money it is simply bundled under 'profits' and no more is said...yet loses from such activities are called 'rogue trading' and treated VERY seriously...criminal conduct, no less! It's pretty clear that someone was at least willfully ignorant and possibly criminally negligent, and UBSs internal systems and controls were woefully inadequate (I have this on good authority). It seems possible, perhaps likely that at a lot of banks a 'heads I win, tails you lose' mentality prevails regarding breaches of trading limits: bank management will look the other way as long as the bets are profitable, but woe betide traders who lose money in this fashion... they may double down, but are always at risk of having the rug pulled from under their feet when the problem becomes too big to ignore and management or risk "realises" what is going on...management then claims that this 'unforseeable' loss was due to criminal conduct by a rogue individual and hence should have no bearing on their own compensation...and woe betide the shareholders... The most interesting question for me is this: How much of the profits of the investment banking sector over the past 10 or so years were due to so-called 'rogue' trades (i.e. trades in breach of stated risk limits)...