Biz media obsessed with rogue trader's college education

Yvette Kantrow of TheDeal.com wants to know why the business media is obsessed with where the Société Générale trader who lost more than $7 billion went to college.

Kantrow wrote, “You can hardly pick up a newspaper account of Kerviel’s shenanigans at Société Générale without reading about how Kerviel attended lowly University of Lyon–an ‘average college,’ in the words of the status arbiters at The New York Times.

“‘Many of his colleagues had been plucked from the prestigious Grandes Ecoles — the Harvards and M.I.T.’s of France — and wielded advanced degrees in math or engineering,’ the Gray Lady sniffed on Jan. 25, on its front page, no less. ‘Mr. Kerviel arrived from business school and started out shuffling paper in the back office.’

“The New York Times wasn’t the only one unimpressed with Kerviel’s education. The Los Angeles Times noted that he ‘trained at the nondescript schools of France’s second cities.’ The Wall Street Journal dubbed Kerviel’s alma mater ‘a second-tier business school’ — a factoid it delivered in the same front-page story that informed that his mother ‘cut hair in a low-rent beauty salon off a parking lot.’

“Ouch.”

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