FACTBOX - SocGen and previous major trading scandals

(Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale said fraud by a single trader had caused it a 4.9 billion euro (3.7 billion pound) loss and that it would seek emergency funds as a result, shocking battered markets.

Here is a list of some of the major financial markets trading frauds in recent years:

November 1989 - Michael Milken, known as the junk bond king when he headed bond operations at U.S. investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for securities fraud. Drexel filed for bankruptcy after being fined $650 million in fines and restitution.

April 1992 - Indian banks and brokers were accused of colluding illegally to siphon $1.3 billion from the inter-bank securities market to fuel a boom on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Top broker Harshad Mehta, the main person accused in the scandal, died in jail during the trial.

February 1995 - One of Britain's oldest investment banks, Barings Plc, collapsed after lone futures trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost some $1.4 billion in derivatives trading. Leeson was jailed in Singapore. Barings was subsequently sold to Dutch bank ING (ING.AS) for one pound.

September 1995 - Japan's Daiwa Bank suffered a $1.1 billion loss from unauthorised bond trading by Toshihide Iguchi, one of its executives in the United States. He was imprisoned in 1996.

June 1996 - Japan's trading house Sumitomo Corp suffered a $2.6 billion loss over 10 years from unauthorised copper trades, primarily by chief copper trader Yasuo Hamanaka. Sumitomo fired Hamanaka, once dubbed "Mr Five Percent" because his trading team was believed to control five percent of the world's copper trading. He was later jailed for eight years.

January 2001 - Former chief financial officer of the now-defunct Griffin Trading Co., Scott Szach, was charged with diverting more than $5.56 million from a company bank account to a brokerage trading account to fund unauthorised trading in the 18 months before the firm's demise.

September 2001 - Merrill Lynch fired two senior executives for their failure to supervise a currency dealer who diverted profits on foreign exchange deals to favoured clients, leaving the bank facing a $10 million bill.

February 2002 - Ireland's largest bank Allied Irish revealed a rogue U.S. trader John Rusnak had defrauded its U.S. subsidiary of up to $750 million. Rusnak was sentenced in January 2003 to 7-1/2 years in prison. He admitted devising a scheme that netted him $850,000 in salary and bonuses from 1997 to 2001.

March/April 2006 - Hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC and its former head trader, Brian Hunter, tried to manipulate gas futures contracts on the NYMEX in 2006. Amaranth racked up $6.4 billion in losses from the bad natural gas contracts before it folded in 2006. In July 2007 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged Amaranth and Brian Hunter, with trying to manipulate natural gas futures prices.

(Writing by Nagesh Narayana; Editing by David Cutler/Elaine Hardcastle)