Read Charles Bremner's Blog: Jérôme Kerviel, world hero

Until Thursday Jérôme Kerviel was an obscure bank employee. Now the man who lost five billion euro is a superstar of the internet and a folk hero to many.

France’s rogue trader is being saluted around the world, and especially at home, as a Robin Hood who has made a fool of the Sheriff of Nottingham — or as “the Che Guevara of Finance” who has laid low the imperialists.

“JK’s” disastrous deals at the mighty Société Générale have made him the darling of ordinary people who do not like banks. Mr Kerviel is a butt for French comedians — and a spur for anti-French gloating in the Anglo-American business world.

“Jérôme, je t’aime,” declare women among thousands of internet postings on the Breton trader’s exploits. T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Jérôme Kerviel’s girlfriend” or “Jérôme Kerviel, 4,900,000,000 euros Respect” are on offer from a group on the Facebook social networking site called “Jérôme Kerviel Should Win the Nobel Prize for Economics”. There were a million searches for Kerviel on Google over the past two days.

Websites with his name have sprung up. Hundreds of fans have registered on tribute sites, many of them tongue-in-cheek. Dozens of Kerviel videos have been posted on YouTube and Dailymotion, and he has a detailed Wikipedia entry.

The “James Bond of SocGen” may have lost his own Facebook entry last weekend, but a dozen fake ones have been registered. There are more than 30 groups in French and English. On one alone he has more than 900 fans, most of them saluting his achievement in burning up one tenth of France’s annual budget deficit from his computer in SocGen’s headquarters at La Défense.One group of fans is called “Saving Trader Kerviel”. Another suggests that five billion people send a euro each to save his career. Some simply ask: “Where did you put it, Jérôme?”

JK’s stardom comes in two flavours. There is mockery, mainly in English and apparently from the financial world. Within hours of the scandal breaking, an Englishlanguage spoof news story was circulating about Mr Kerviel being dreadfully stressed by his French 30-hour working week. “Way to go, Jéro,” says one posting. “Now sell us the Eiffel Tower.”

There is also glee over the young provincial humiliating the establishment and embarrassing “Bling-Bling Sarko”, the billionaire-friendly President of France. Such admirers share the widespread French view that Mr Kerviel is a scapegoat for the sins of his superiors.

“We are the many who do not believe for a second the version of the boss of Société Générale,” said a message on a fan site.

“Notre Jérôme” has become a hero for entertainers. Nicolas Canteloup, an impersonator with a popular morning radio slot, has been having fun with him all week. In one sketch he came up with a new TV show: “Who wants to lose billions?” — a play on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? In another, Canteloup’s Nicolas Sarkozy — the equivalent of Rory Bremner’s Gordon Brown — appointed Mr Kerviel as Finance Minister, in place of Christine Lagarde: “He has lost only ¤billion, while she has a deficit of €50 billion,” according to “Sarko”.

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