Something odd is happening. We’re starting to feel sorry for Alistair Darling. True, his ability to take the flak for his boss’s cock-ups is matched only by his own ability to shoot out policy decisions and ask questions later – but he has already had an entire career’s worth of problems.

His first crisis was the queues outside Northern Rock as the tripartite bank regulatory regime created by his predecessor was found wanting. Then there was the embarrassing loss of personal data of around 25 million taxpayers. Then, after months of “dithering”, he decided it was time to nationalise Northern Rock.

You’ll recall the howls of outrage at the near-doubling of capital gains tax for long-term investors and entrepreneurs (coupled with a slashing of CGT for short-term punters and speculators). Or the theft of Tory policy on ultra-high net worth non-doms, followed by a reversal of some of the more onerous compliance rules. And as companies queue up to escape the UK’s proposals for “simplified” taxation of foreign income, Darling suddenly realises it’s time to listen to the business world. Finally, his acquiescence, then fudging, then capitulation over the 10p tax band was an excruciating episode.

Now the poor man has to put up with Gordon Brown saying, “I think I can steer this economy through difficult times. I have done it before and I can do it again.” Darling must be desperately sorry that Tony Blair didn’t make Gordon wait another 12 months to become PM.

Apologies to readers whose copy of the June Issue was missing the last line of this 'Extraordinary item' owing to a typesetting cock-up!

Societe Generale's 'Mission Green',  the report on its findings in the investigation of trader Jerome Kerviel's activites and the wider framework of management and technology that (inadvertently) faciliatated them, is rather dull. Charts and graphs aplenty follow a 9- page analysis of what went wrong, going so far as to list each relevant day in diary order of Kerviel's fradulent trading actions, from New Year's Eve 2007 to Wednesday 18 January, and a run down of what happened, to the second. Traders are re-badged 'agents' - Kerviel is re-branded 'JK' - but it's not exactly a James Bond/Dr. Evil- style thriller we've got here.

What the report basically seems to conclude is that SocGen's middle management, those supposed to regulate their traders, ensure they stuck to trading limits, identify any dodgyness early on, and use their intelligence to keep things runing smoothly, couldn't be arsed. That meant, perhaps, that someone who was switched on enough to see this laissez-faire attitude simply capitalised on it, knowing that he wouldn't get caught because no one was bothering to look up the basic warning signs, or act on the ones their eyes did happen to meet with. Those employed to respond to big, flashing red lights (Eurex contacting the bank to flag up odd-looking trades coming from around Kerviel's patch, in-house trading systems automatically generating reports highlighting someone in Kerviel's general direction had been busting their trading account limits without authorisation, that sort of thing) didn't do, or didn't move in time, or strongly enough. Indeed, the report says that "supervision of JK appears to have been weak" despite several alerts to front-office about the trader on grounds of vigilance "or for investigation" and adds that desk management didn't identify initial fraudulent trades or their concealment, and tolerated JK's taking of various intraday directional positions that had nothing to do with his mandate there. (Maybe this last point is common in the trading world where making as much as as possible means rule-bending, within limits, is ok).

Obviously, the middle managers around JK had lapsed - but again, SocGen says it can't question JK's then-manager because he doesn't work there anymore. Kerviel was able to move under the radar because when his higher-ups were busy not monitoring him properly or bothering to take action when he was found to have exceeded trading limits, they were preoccupied with finding people to replace staff that had left the bank - such as the person who was responsible for a critical front-office function whose work went uncovered for ten weeks from January 2007.

One manager under whose remit Kerviel fell failed to carry out detailed analysis of his trader's earnings or their positions (all automated) as he was supposed to do. It was a case of clicking a few buttons. Now SocGen thinks Kerviel may have had an accomplice in his trading assistant, who was "dedicated to JK's activity" and registered 15% of Kerviel's trades.

Pre-report, initial speculation across financial newsrooms of Kerviel's motives led to good old capitalist greed. Some thought he just wanted to be seen to be the best, a star trader. Others put it down to a reaction to family troubles or just being a bit of a weirdo: always the quiet ones. But it was such a simple rouse for a man in his position, I doubt Kerviel even needed much of an underlying motivation like wanting more cash, needing more glory, an Oedipus complex, and so on. I''d wager he was just using that nose for opportunity that he was probably hired for. A door was open - he walked through it.

The post-mortem shows that the bank had all the info there, but sadly needed a big kick in the derriere to be pushed into collating it, and into paying attention. 20/20 hindsight is a brilliant invention for the remorseful. It's incredible that an organisation of SocGen's size can marshal its resources to publish something this detailed 16 weeks after fraud was publicly announced, but was unable to organise itself to this effect on a daily basis, something that may have prevented the Kerviel affair from happening.

Of course, from here on in SocGen must show that it has a plan to make all the identified problems better, and then show that it is enacting that plan, and then that the plans is working, and that another Kerviel cannot happen. Avarice is expected of banks and their traders. But in their world, slothfulness really is a deadly sin.

See the report here http://www.sp.socgen.com/sdp/sdp.nsf/V3ID/8D7F118212725EC6C1257452005AA90E/$file/report%20part%203.pdf

A study landed on my desk recently looking into how clued up (or not) European businesses are about climate change. As an environmental reporter for Financial Director, I have to admit I was shocked to discover that 55% of respondents from the six countries that took part 'did not know about' the Kyoto Protocol - UK businesses having the highest percentage of ignorance, with 45%.

Obviously my ego was slightly bruised to think my work had not been read by everyone. But I was shocked to learn how many companies are unaware of something that Tony Blair once called the greatest challenge facing the world today. He wasn’t wrong: this axiom has since evolved into to the greatest challenge facing businesses/finance directors/accountants/consumers/bankers/etc…. You get the picture.

But the stats made me wonder – within companies, who is responsible for making the board and everyone else aware of the environmental implications that come from its operations?

To my mind, it seems the finance director or the chief executive is the person who must step up to that role, especially with mounting government legislation on green issues that make more work for the finance function, in a company’s efforts to account for its carbon emissions (as I wrote about in our May issue – we’ve followed that with a deeper analysis on CO2 reporting in our June issue, out this week).

Fine - but is this the way forward for the finance director? Yet more taxation? More red tape? More responsibility? And is it a coincidence that 77% of UK respondents said the government paid ‘little or no attention’ to threats of climate change?

All companies know that climate change is taking place (you need to take your winter and your summer jacket with you when you leave the house these days). The government has made sure of it. But has it missed, in its bid to be at the 'forefront of the environmental agenda', the need to ensure companies not only understand what is expected of them, but also how are they supposed to achieve the targets? Legislating is all very well, but there has been no move to mandate any one person or create any one role standardised across the UK business landscape that will be responsible for overseeing the response to the glut of new laws and guidance.

For those of you wondering about the UK 's targets for the Protocol, the UK needs to reduce emissions not only to levels recorded in 1990, but reduce them a further 5%, by 2012.

Rachael Singh

The Financial Times told us the other day that Moody's mistakenly gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars worth of debt products because of a bug in their computer models. The error, spotted in January 2007, resulted in some financial instruments receiving credit ratings up to four notches higher than they should have had.

Today we learn that the Office "for" National Statistics (as opposed to "against" National Statistics?) miscalculated the pensions data released in April. Apparently they took some weekly pensions income data but mistakenly treated it as monthly data. Hence, the real figures -- once they become available -- could be up to four times greater than previously revealed.

Is there a lesson here along the lines of the increasing innumeracy of the population? Or is it simply that people aren't thinking about what they're calculating or about whether the "answers" they get bear any resemblance to what common sense ought to tell them is the real outcome?

The other day, The Wall Street Journal ran a profile piece on the CFO of Lehman Bros, Erin Callan. The 42-year-old blonde is described as someone "who topples much of the conventional wisdom about finance chiefs".

Said to be "the highest-ranking woman on Wall Street", it's neither her gender nor her age that has The Wall Street Journal so shook up. "Unlike Lehman's two prior finance chiefs, Ms Callan isn't an accountant; nor has she worked in the finance department." A tax lawyer-turned-investment banker, she is said to receive "a slimmer daily financial summary than predecessors", her preferred means of information-gathering being "the trading floor contacts built during her 13-year Lehman career".

But get this: "She embraces television" - "embraces"? Apparently that means "appearing frequently". Contrast that with Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar, the longest-serving FD - sorry, CFO - on Wall Street. "Mr Viniar has never" - gasp! - "made an appearance on CNBC".

Callan is certainly being commended for her greater openness, transparency and candour. Having forecast in January that the bank's return on equity would average in the mid- to high teens, it's currently around 9%. "Sometimes," she said, "in hindsight, your forecast will not have been accurate based on the real world outcome." Well, what else would the accuracy of your forecast be based on???

We'll watch Ms Callan with interest, we think. It will be enlightening to see whether her CFO-lite approach to financial management is the better route to take, or whether her lack of finance department experience ultimately proves her undoing, as it has done for organisations as diverse as Enron and Shell.

A coffin maker has won the first ever Sunday Times list of the Top 50 Best Green Companies. Let me just put you at ease: they don't recycle coffins, but they do burn the off-cuts of the coffins to heat and power their organisation. They also have solar panels and are so energy-efficient that they even sell back power to the National Grid.

Interestingly, far from the usual suspects of the greenwashing kind who publicise every can they recycle, the list proves that companies of all shapes and sizes are doing their bit and customising their environmental best practises to suit their organisation.

Bank HBOS came 6th, behind construction groups Carillion (2nd) and Skanska UK (5th). Surprisingly, the Co-op – known as the ethical bank – came third. And various companies that use the environment as their unique selling point such as environmental advisors Greencare H20 and Renewable Energy Systems came 19th and 24th respectively.

Other big companies to make the list included Total E&P UK, one of the largest operators in the North Sea supplying the UK with 10% of its oil and gas; it ranked 11th, showing that big players responsible for getting hydrocarbons out of the ground can still get on top of the environmental agenda.

PricewaterhouseCoopers came 15th with Deloitte - the only other accountancy firm in the list - just barely scraping in at 42nd.

Having said all this, the ranking wasn't concerned with the industry of the organisation that took part nor the size of their carbon footprint, but what lengths the company was going to to reduce its impact on the environment.

For example, Total E&P UK proved that they go beyond regulatory requirements with various environmental implementation such as expanding its use of nitrogen to minimise carbon emissions.

This list goes some way to prove that legislation that forces companies to become environmentally friendly is not always the best solution. Instead, the government should be supplementing that with best practice codes of practice.

Rachael Singh

When we interviewed British Airways FD Keith Williams last October, he made clear that the airline had its sights set on a 10% operating margin for the 2007-08 year. Payment of a dividend for the first time since 2001 depended on achieving that target, as did staff bonuses - including Williams's.

"Not surprisingly," we wrote, "BA's management has been extremely focused on achieving the 10% target. So much so that one gets the impression it has become something of a burden - it's often quoted, and has provided analysts and business journalists with a clearly defined yardstick against which to measure the company's future success or failure." Williams told us that the 10% figure had certainly been "a focus of the business for the past five or six years".

So congratulations to BA and Williams for achieving an operating margin that is reported today as... ten point zero percent. A shame for CEO Willie Walsh that he thought it best to decline his bonus, after the T5 disaster.

A couple of months ago one of our writers asked, "Do  I need to explain to the readers what 'stagflation' is?" The editor, being of a certain age, briefly turned puce at the ridiculous notion that Financial Director readers might need such a simple term defined for them.

Then he went a little pale as he realised that a number of readers will never have actually experienced the simultaneous perils of runaway inflation and a crushing recession - well, not in their professional lives, anyway.

They might be about to get their chance now that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is warning about "an odd quarter or two of negative growth" while the outlook for inflation is northwards from the current 3%.

Okay, it's not exactly a repeat of 1970s-era stagflation when inflation and unemployment rates were both in double figures. But they always say that you can't have just a little bit of inflation. It's like being just a little bit pregnant.