West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - NorthPoint Trading Partners, LLC has opened a new office in Chicago, IL., with 12 year industry veteran, Michael Ferro, as head. Ferro has held positions at Genworth Financial, Knight Capital Markets, and X-Change Financial Access. He is experienced in both the trading and operations aspects of the buy and sell side, the company said.

“As we continue to expand our presence nationwide, we are very fortunate to have someone with Michael’s talent and experience join our team,” says Douglas Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of NorthPoint Trading Partners, LLC. Atlanta based NorthPoint opened also opened an office in Connecticut earlier in the year.

NorthPoint is an institutional brokerage and fund services company working with small and medium sized hedge funds.

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - French officials have arrested a trader who allegedly lost more than $1 billion in complex derivative trades.  Boris Picano-Nacci of mutual bank Caisse d’Epargne was taken in for questioning last week, days after the loss forced the bank’s top three executives to part ways. 

A copy of the bank’s internal investigation was said to have been obtained by French news magazine Nouvel Observateur, when they published the findings on Wednesday.   
According to that report, Caisse d’Epargne found lax internal controls and several alerts that had been disregarded.

The bank has stated that this was an error made by a small team of traders, who made a bad bet on the direction of the stock market while exceeding their trading risk limit. 

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde revealed that an initial investigation had uncovered “serious holes” in the bank’s controls. 

This is the second trading scandal to rock a French bank this year.  Societe Generale made headlines in January for its $7 billion loss thanks to 31-year-old rogue trader Jerome Kerviel.

Caisse d’Epargne is currently planning a merger with French mutual lender Banque Populaire.   

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