Natixis’s €260m hit blamed on big books and Kospi3 product

Rivals say French dealer grew business too quickly – with leveraged version of Korean index one source of pain

Structured products have a nasty habit of coming back to bite the banks that issue them. This week it was Natixis at the end of a well-trodden path of despair. In a December 18 trading statement, the French dealer revealed a €260 million ($230 million) hit after a hedging strategy for autocallable bonds sold to South Korean investors failed.

Traders at other banks tell two different stories of the bank’s fate. One is a tale of an overly ambitious Asian expansion that created outsize exposures,