PARIS: France's finance minister said Wednesday that authorities were re-examining a 2.2-billion-euro ($2.5 billion) tax break Societe Generale took, after a court found it partly responsible for losses in a 2008 rogue trading scandal.
Michel Sapin said he hoped for a quick review following the appeals court ruling last week in the eight-year case of "rogue trader" Jerome Kerviel.
The lender, one of France's top three banks, had claimed, under tax rules, the writedown as it maintained the 4.9-billion-euro loss it had suffered was due to fraud.
But the court in Versailles found that the "...loss could not have been incurred without the woefully inadequate oversight systems at Societe Generale".
It ordered Kerviel to pay one million euros to his former employer, Societe Generale, instead of the full 4.9 billion euros the lender had been seeking.
Sapin told a news conference on France's 2017 draft budget that the "ruling recognises a responsibility that I would qualify as signficant" by the bank in the trading by Kerviel.
Kerviel at one point was staking as much as 50 billion euros of Societe Generale's money on the market and nearly pushed the lender into bankruptcy.
The tax administration is now "re-examining the tax situation of Societe Generale", Sapin told reporters.
"We'll see what decisions need to be taken," he added.
"Personally, I favour a resolution as quickly as possible because in these sorts of situations you shouldn't let things drag out," he said.
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