FACTBOX: Shopping list for SocGen's $7.2 bln loss
(Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) said this week a rogue trader built up illicit trades that cost it 4.9 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to unwind.
But just how much is $7.2 billion? Here is how the sum shapes up against other financial indicators. It is:
* Greater than the individual GDP of 63 countries, according to 2006 World Bank data, including Chad, Mauritius, Armenia, Brunei, Namibia, Macedonia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Malta, West Bank and Gaza, Barbados, the Seychelles and Nicaragua.
* More than the market capitalization of French companies including advertising company Publicis, technology group Safran or the country's largest television broadcaster TF1.
With the money, SocGen could have bought:
* Four space shuttles, at NASA prices, with some cash left over for fuel.
* Two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers at French defense ministry budget listings or 10 of its high-tech FREMM frigates.
* 22 of the world's largest passenger airliner, the Airbus superjumbo A380, which has a list price of $320 million, or 25 Boeing 747s with a $286 million sticker.
* 106 high-tech French-made Rafale fighter planes.
* The most expensive villa in the world (which is in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to data from Forbes magazine) 44 times over. Likewise, it could have bought the estate of fictitious character Count Dracula in Romania, 51 times over, or the most expensive house in Britain (a 103-room house mansion south of London) 52 times.
* The most expensive diamond ever sold at auction (the "Star of the Season," which went for $16.5 million in May 1995) 435 times.
* London's Chelsea soccer club, 72 times over, at the 2003 price paid by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovic; Aston Villa soccer club, 114 times over, at the 2006 price U.S. billionaire Doug Ellis paid for it; and Liverpool soccer club, 21 times, at its 2007 list price.
* 18,149 top-of-the-range 599 Ferraris at their British list price of 202,000 pounds ($395,600). (There is a three-year waiting list for each vehicle so SocGen would have had to wait for delivery.)
* Alternatively, the bank could have bought 545,050 Ford Fiestas, almost five cars for each of SocGen's 120,000 employees.
* 718,000 kg of top quality Beluga Black Caviar.
Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest it could have bought the weight in gold of the 15-member SocGen board, 203 times over, assuming the average board member weighed 80 kg.
Alternatively, it could have bought its chairman's weight in gold, 3,052 times over.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Suzy Valentine)
