Perhaps UBS Is Hiring

What are my qualifications to work as a broker at Swiss banking giant UBS?

I could easily lose billions of dollars, and I'd do it at a lower cost to the bank. I wouldn't demand as high a salary as Mr. Kweku Adoboli, but then again, I wouldn't live in London where it's far too expensive to survive.

And how difficult could it be to make $2 billion in bad investments? Look at the U.S. Federal Government. They sank half a billion into a single solar-panel manufacturer and lost it all. I'd only have to find four such firms to reach my goal.

My ability to work such complex maths calculations in my head is also indicative of my latent abilities. The office supply department at UBS wouldn't have to buy me a calculator. I'd save them money the minute I sat at my desk.

Also, I'm a self starter, so it wouldn't be difficult for me to go rogue on the trading floor. A little fraud, a little computer manipulation, and I, too, could achieve the success which Mr. Adoboli found.

With UBS still reeling from the losses it took by investing in U.S. sub-prime mortgages, it's little wonder that their share price has plummeted. An investor would be inclined to believe that the investment segment of UBS has no idea what it's doing, which is not a way to inspire confidence in potential clients. Without clients, you don't have much of a business, and who wants to own a piece of that?

Also of concern to investors is the apparent inability of UBS to learn from a similar debacle at Societe Generale in 2008. The French bank lost even more due to a rogue trader in the ranks, but UBS failed to install the sort of safeguards that a more cautious firm might have put into place to avoid a repeat of such a serious mistake.

Not that any of us rogue traders are stealing the money for ourselves. When a single mistake can cost you your job, you'd try to cover up the mistake or make good before the bosses found it. Then that leads to further losses, and the cover up becomes more extensive. The entire system spirals out of control, until the losses becomes so huge that it's impossible to hide them anymore.

For the sake of keeping a grip on his job, Mr. Adoboli will end up in jail, disgraced. He'll never work on a trading floor again, and who would trust him to work in banking after he's served his time?

If he'd confessed at the beginning, he'd have been sacked, but he would stand a better chance of re-employment than he does now. Wasn't it Sir Walter Scott who had something to say about the tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive?