He failed in a bid for town council in his 20s; he never rose higher than a green belt, a midlevel rank, after years of judo training %26#151; because of his bad knees; and he attended an average college where he earned respectable but unremarkable grades. %26#8220;People who want to be golden boys or clever in the market don%26#8217;t come here,%26#8221; said Val%26#233;rie Buthion, the director of the University of Lyon%26#8217;s economic and financial engineering department, where Mr. Kerviel earned a master%26#8217;s degree in market finance. %26#8220;The showoffs don%26#8217;t come.%26#8221;As they sought to explain how a low-level trader caused a $7.2 billion loss, Mr. Kerviel%26#8217;s former bosses at Soci%26#233;t%26#233; G%26#233;n%26#233;rale, one of France%26#8217;s oldest and most venerated banks, portrayed him as a %26#8220;brilliant%26#8221; trader who eluded sophisticated detection systems. But the mundane outlines of the life of Mr. Kerviel, 31, betray no flashes of brilliance. Rather, the portrait of him painted by those who knew him shows a reserved man who most often blended into the background. His less-than-impressive persona has led to doubts that he could be the sole culprit in the bank%26#8217;s enormous losses. Despite a lack of evidence, some financial experts, especially in France, have suggested that Mr. Kerviel might be a scapegoat for other losses incurred by Soci%26#233;t%26#233; G%26#233;n%26#233;rale, some perhaps related to subprime mortgages. Mr. Kerviel%26#8217;s 100,000-euro salary ($147,000) as a trader was paltry compared with salaries of his colleagues, and in 2006 he received only a 1.5 percent raise. Traders who worked with Mr. Kerviel said he was quiet and low key %26#151; smart, but hardly a computer genius. When the news broke, %26#8220;I saw his photograph and thought, no, it%26#8217;s not possible. It couldn%26#8217;t be him,%26#8221; said one junior trader who worked with him and did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The son of a hairdresser and a vocational school metal shop teacher, who died about two years ago, Mr. Kerviel was born in Pont-l%26#8217;Abb%26#233;, a small town on Brittany%26#8217;s fog-enveloped coast. He lived there until going to college, the town%26#8217;s mayor, Thierry Mavic, told The Telegramme of Brest, in Brittany. %26#8220;He was a poised, calm, reflective young man. A little reserved,%26#8221; Mr. Mavic said.Mr. Kerviel completed his undergraduate studies in Nantes and then attended the University of Lyon for graduate school. The university opened more than 10 years ago backed by major French banks, with the express purpose of training students for the unglamorous middle and back-office functions of processing and monitoring trades. %26#8220;He was a student just like the others, a young man, and he didn%26#8217;t distinguish himself from the others,%26#8221; said one of his former teachers, Gisele Reynaud, who taught Mr. Kerviel how to track and monitor trades.Like many of his classmates, Mr. Kerviel got his professional start with a paid internship at Banque Nationale de Paris. He joined Soci%26#233;t%26#233; G%26#233;n%26#233;rale in 2000. Pont-l%26#8217;Abb%26#233;%26#8217;s mayor, Mr. Mavic, thought so much of Mr. Kerviel that he invited him to join him on his list of candidates to run in municipal elections in 2001. (You do not have to live in a town in France to be on its city council, or even to be its mayor.) Mr. Mavic told The Telegramme that Mr. Kerviel did not get enough votes to win a seat. Mr. Kerviel%26#8217;s former judo teacher, Philippe Orhant, said he taught him judo for more than six years and that Mr. Kerviel later taught martial arts to children. %26#8220;He worked well with people,%26#8221; recalled Mr. Orhant, who said that he ultimately dropped out of the sport with a green belt because of medical problems with his knees.With publicity intensifying about the reclusive former trader, grim family members in Pont-l%26#8217;Abb%26#233; were in no mood to talk about him. %26#8220;Sorry,%26#8221; said his aunt, Raymonde Kerviel, before briskly slamming down the telephone receiver. %26#8220;I have no interest in talking about this.%26#8221; In the French media, former colleagues and even agents in a neighborhood real estate office near his apartment remembered him for his understated sartorial elegance and a boyish resemblance to Tom Cruise. 1 2 Next Page %26#x00bb;
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