Bruno Mitchell Iksil, nicknamed "The London Whale"
It's no secret that there are far more traders who have failed to achieve success in the financial markets than those who have managed to break through to the top of the financial Olympus and earn millions of dollars.
However, even guru traders with many years of trading experience sometimes make fatal mistakes, the cost of which can sometimes amount to millions, and in some cases, billions of dollars.
Many of these traders are brought to trial and endure media and public purgatory for imagining themselves to be the kings of the market.
However, there are cases when such a situation occurred under the careful guidance of management, and the trader who did the dirty work becomes the scapegoat.
The Early Years of the London Whale
Bruno Mitchell Iksil grew up in a relatively affluent middle-class family in the Paris suburbs. His mother was a chemist working in manufacturing, and his father was the director of an auto parts company.
From childhood, Bruno Mitchell showed a great interest in mathematics and physics and had good Olympiad achievements in these fields, not to mention the fact that he played chess professionally.
It is also worth noting that the "London Whale" was a true polyglot, and it took him no more than three months to learn a new language.
His excellent knowledge of physics and mathematics, as well as his inclusion in the top 150 best students in Paris based on his exam results, allowed him to enroll in the Ecole Centrale Paris, where he, in turn, began actively studying and participating in nuclear technology projects.
After graduating in 1992, he became a civil servant at a nuclear facility near Paris, where he was actively involved in designing nuclear waste disposal and processing.
Trader career
Although Bruno Mitchell Iksil was an excellent specialist in nuclear chemistry, the labor market dictated its own conditions, so, on the advice of his labor agent, he had to look into the banking and financial sector.
His first job was at the Transact Control fund, where he held a management position in the IT department and was also involved in hedging the company's risks.
Transact Control was founded by the Rothschild family, so landing a leadership position at the company was a huge stepping stone in the London whale's future career.
A little later, in 1997, he received an offer from the French bank Natexis. At the French bank, Bruno Mitchel Iksil was actively involved in bond trading and also building his investment portfolio.
However, for unknown reasons, Bruno was removed from management and stripped of his stake in the company.
Disagreeing with the injustice, Bruno filed a lawsuit against the company and successfully stole it, which allowed him to return to the company and head a new division, despite the strife between shareholders.
The collapse of hopes.
In 2005, Bruno Mitchell Iksil received an offer to head up a division at JP Morgan, where he managed two traders. Naturally, Bruno couldn't resist the opportunity to work at Europe's largest investment bank.
His task was not to make money for the company, as other traders did, but to hedge the risks of an existing investment portfolio.
Having coordinated all actions with management, the bank and Bruno actively began buying credit default swaps on 125 companies, which led to strong jumps in the market.
As Bruno Mitchell Iksil himself claims, he has repeatedly stated that the injection of 8 billion dollars simply cannot go unnoticed by other market participants.
At the time, no one knew who was actually carrying out such large-scale operations on the market, so the trader was nicknamed the London whale.
Everything would have been fine, but information leaked that a major investment bank was playing against the market, so numerous funds from around the world began actively betting against the company, which led to a market collapse and, as a result, a loss of 6 billion dollars.
Despite the fact that society and the media, as well as JP Morgan itself, blamed the London whale for everything, the court still fined the company for concealing information in its financial statements, and Bruno Mitchell Iksil himself got off with only his dismissal.
However, despite the shared guilt of Bruno and the entire management, the path to financial markets for the London whale was permanently closed due to severe reputational losses
