The UBS Story: Ignorance or Apathy?

Kweku Adoboli was arrested today for fraud as a result of making unauthorized trades during his time at UBS. Oh, and by the way, he lost the firm about $2 billion. You could buy the Empire State Building with that type of money. You could buy a major league baseball team with that kind of money- twice. So my question is, how is a lowly trader able to get past the security systems of one of the largest investment banks in the entire world and screw around with company money? I mean the head of investment banking at UBS, Carsten Kenteger, didn't get almost $15 million last year for improving his golf swing and chatting up prospective clients, right? I figured that after the Lehman/Bear Stearns debacle, there might be some sort of increased level of security. Maybe I was just being foolish. After all, the execs are still going to have their apartments on Park and their houses in Amagansett, regardless of whether their bank goes belly up. Even in the case of Lehman's Richard Fuld, whose $1 billion fortune dwindled to a fraction of that following his company's implosion, was able to scrape together nearly $40 million from selling personal affects. Don't get me wrong, Fuld lost essentially everything he had made over the course of his time at Lehman, but it's not exactly like he had to freeze his butt off waiting outside the soup kitchen afterwards either. It's a little bit disheartening, in my opinion, that the reality may be that executives have a infinitesimal amount of concern for the welfare of their companies, as they will always have their comfortable nest egg upon which to rest their heads.