STOCK MARKETS: Another Crash At the Bourse

In the U.S. memories of the October stock crash are fading, but in France aftershocks are still rumbling through the Paris Bourse. Investors were stunned by last week’s revelation that $85 million of the $255 million in the reserve fund of the Association of French Stock Exchanges, a stockbrokers’ group, had been gambled away on speculative investments. In the wake of the scandal, the president of the association, Xavier Dupont, and one of his top deputies, Philippe Cosserat, resigned.

Under its new president, Regis Rousselle, the organization imposed a $170 million levy on Bourse members. But, he admits, “after a catastrophe of this kind, the credibility of the exchange is at risk.”