| Ask Richard Sandor or Wendy de Monchaux whether they think Banque Indosuez is a useful addition to Crédit Agricole's financial fire-power. Their answer might be a short expletive. Both of them quit Indosuez after a brief, but initially successful, attempt to turn the conservative banque d'affaires into an Anglo-Saxon-style derivatives powerhouse. Jean-Claude Gruffat, at that time in charge of Indosuez in New York, hired Sandor and de Monchaux in April 1990 from a defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert, where they had just successfully unwound a $25 billion swap book. Their brief at Indosuez was to develop a derivatives trading operation to expand the bank's client base and enhance profits. By the end of two years they had done both, although Sandor quit after a year. Indosuez was regarded as the French house in New York for derivatives and structured products, and 1992 trading profits soared to $90 million, according to former members of the swap team. This was done without taking excessive risk. Sandor preferred arbitrage to open-position trading. The team was also active in Paris, London and Hong Kong. But within a year, things began to go wrong on the personal front. |