There is an interesting piece in the FT this morning about the growing pressure on Marcel Ospel, chairman of UBS, over the bank’s cumulative $18bn write-down on US mortgage securities.

The article refers to his "reputation as a cold-blooded power broker". I have no inside knowledge of that but I do know that he has remarkable staying power.

My column in the Financial Times this week compares Jérôme Kerviel of Société Générale with Tom Cruise. Yes, seriously. You can read it here and comment below.

One further thought on le rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale (further apologies for the lack of accents).

As I wrote before, there are striking similarities between him and Nick Leeson, the Barings rogue trader. The biggest relates to his motivation.

Both Leeson and Kerviel were lowly figures within their banks who were not supposed to be taking risks with their trading but seem to have started doing so in an effort to burnish their reputations – to make themselves into stars inside their banks.

This piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning rings lots of bells from the Barings case. Like Kerviel, Leeson was supposed to be carrying out routine, low-profile arbitrage trading but instead drifted into doing something different.

Kerviel appears to have been even more deluded than Leeson, who was actively encouraged by his bank to expand his activities because he appeared to be making a lot of money. Kerviel now claims to have been "tolerated" by SocGen; we shall see how much truth there is in that.

Outsiders often have a lot of difficulty understanding why a trader takes extreme risks and engages in fraud unless it is to make money. But I think they miss the point: status anxiety is an equally plausible motive.

Trading floors are not much different from school playgrounds. They are highly competitive places and people can sometimes do crazy things to impress others.