Sympathy for Jerome Kerviel

A lot of things have been happening lately - banking recruitment, gargantuan write offs, American elections, FT MBA rankings, where both INSEAD and LBS gained ground, but the most fascinating story so far has been the rise and fall of Jerome Kerviel. The best thing is that the story is far from over.

Articles about him appear daily in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the FT and the Economist. He is an unlikely hero in France. If he would have been succesfull in his trades, he would probably been promoted, and nothing would ever appear in the press (makes you wonder how much of that is currently going on). The fallout has uncovered lots of dirty secrets (and much more is coming). The burning question is how was it possible that NO ONE noticed the exposure, the profits and subsequently the losses.

INSEAD and The Economist

This week's The Economist has an article mentioning INSEAD in not so bright colours. It is called "Insead out?". Below is an abstract from it:

"...One INSEAD insider says that the school is “rattled” by the latest rankings and by all the new competition. The school is obsessed with rankings, says an employee. Much management time goes on
“gaming” the ratings to ensure a good score..."

It is quite ironic because Antonio Fatas, the dean of MBA, has addressed the burning question of rankings in his welcome to December 2008 class. And he made a particular example of The Economist business school rankings, which by the way seem to yield notably different results from other major rankings.

Rankings aside, a few interesting figures came out of that speech. The most compelling was the acceptance yield, the percentage of admitted, who enroll. Apparently, it is very high at INSEAD, second only to a major American school, reflecting a strong commitment of applicants to INSEAD. Another one was the percentage of those applying exclusively to INSEAD, which was also quite staggering.

Finally, Antonio had to deal with the question about the acceptance rate, which is usually on the mind of all applicants, at least I remember looking for it in vain all over internet.