French rogue trader appeals conviction

French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, second from right, arrives with his lawyer David Koubbi, left, at the court in Paris yesterday, before an appeal hearing against a 2010 conviction for wild gambles that lost one of France’s biggest banks €5 billion, almost destroying it in the process. The 35-year-old from a small town in Brittany was sentenced to five years in jail with two years suspended for breach of trust, forgery and entering false data into computers during the 2008 covert stock market deals. The original verdict also required him to pay back the staggering €4.9 billion his market gambles cost Societe Generale.