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Tintin Loses $7.6 Billion

By Carol Matlack

Tintin Loses $7.6 Billion

The daily routine of a bank employee doesn’t sound like promising material for a comic book…unless the employee is Jérôme Kerviel. The Diary of Jérôme Kerviel, a fictionalized account of how the 31-year-old rogue trader at Société Générale lost the French bank more than $7.6 billion, is set to hit Paris bookstores in mid-September. Kerviel, who is awaiting trial, had no involvement in the project, says Xavier Thomas, whose Paris-based Thomas Editions is issuing the 40-page volume. Thomas says he hopes the book, which is aimed at the large audience of French adults who regularly read comics, will educate readers about the workings of financial markets. The comic is in French, but non-Francophones can catch the general drift from the illustrations, one of which depicts a dejected Kerviel sitting on the jail square of a Monopoly game board.