"Fabulous Fab," the Goldman Sachs Trader Convicted of Fraud

During the second semester of the academic calendar, students at the University of Chicago will be able to follow a module called “Elements of Economic Analysis,” taught by doctoral candidate Fabrice Tourre, announced the Chicago Maroon, the school’s student newspaper.

If that name rings a bell, it’s hardly surprising.

Fabrice Tourre is the French trader who has headlined on all the international media for “being the first and sole Wall Street banker found guilty for the financial meltdown” of 2008, explained the New Yorker in 2013. Employed by Goldman Sachs, he was convicted in Aug. 2013 after being accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of “stock fraud, illegal gain, negligence and intentional deception and helping his ex-employer to engage in criminal activities,” as Le Monde noted when the verdict was announced.

In July 2013, Le Monde depicted the portrait of—self-proclaimed—“Fabulous Fab” as the perfect candidate for Goldman Sachs: Ecole Centrale (of the most prestigious French school), Stanford University….

While at Goldman Sachs, he met another “big head” with whom he set up a revolutionary financial product. He is so far “the only one prosecuted by the American Justice Department for the part he took, in 2007, in selling toxic assets backed by subprime called Abacus.” The trader quit Goldman Sachs in Jan. 2013, while he was a doctoral candidate in economy at University of Chicago, where he was working as an assistant and giving individual sessions to students, according to the Wall Street Journal.

One of his fellow students who was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, praised “someone like Fabrice” for the University: “People like Fabrice, who come from investment banking, are very useful in the [economics] program. As academics we tend to be on the outside, and investment banks tend to be closed. People are joking that economists develop these models, but the real world is much messier.”

Michael A. Santoro, a teacher specializing in business ethics, published an article on the New Yorker’s website entitled, “Can a Disgraced Trader get a Job in Academia?” He had attended the trial of Fabrice Tourre in Aug. 2013 and already pondered on his teaching career: “His experience at Goldman Sachs and a Ph.D. from Chicago would otherwise make him a much sought-after candidate, and it would be natural for him to want to use both his economics degree and Wall Street experience to teach future Wall Street executives. But would any business school be willing to hire Tourre, better known as Fabulous Fab, who has become the face of Wall Street greed?”

A teacher explained to him that her establishment would not recruit him as a teacher, but she could welcome him during seminars “in an effort to scare students straight and warn them about ethical and legal pitfalls,” Santoro highlighted.

University of Chicago has thus decided to fully enjoy Fabrice’s talents, twice a week.