French bank Societe Generale (EPA: GLE) is not having an especially good day. First, the French police raided its headquarters as part of the continuing investigation of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel - specifically, the police were looking into another SocGen employee who had extensive contact with Kerviel though the exact details of the raid have not been released yet.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. shareholder Phillip Barkett brought a lawsuit against the company on the grounds that it misled investors about its subprime loans as well as didn't take proper precautions against the actions of Kerviel. The Missouri resident who brought the suit owned American Depository Receipts of SocGen and allegedly lost $3,100.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeks to represent all purchasers of SocGen ADRs and all U.S. buyers of the bank's shares on any exchange between Aug. 1, 2005, and Jan. 23, 2008. It states that "[SocGen] thus gave investors no warning about the size of [its] losses," and "SocGen had a 'culture of risk' in which risky trading was tacitly permitted."

These allegations all stem from the shocking $7.5 billion in losses that SocGen, France's second largest bank, announced in January. Amazingly, the bank claims that these trades were carried out without its knowledge by 31 year-old Kerviel who was only a junior trader. These problems have only been exacerbated by recent general problems in the world capital markets which caused SocGen to take further losses in February.

SocGen shares are actually up because today's news, compared to that of the last two months, isn't particularly bad for the company - though shares are still trading more than 50% off their 52 week high.

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