SECURITIES

Kidder Fires Trader for Hiding Losses: Kidder, Peabody Group Inc., still trying to recover from huge losses in government bond trading suffered earlier this year, said it has fired a trader in its London office for allegedly hiding $6 million in losses on options on French and Spanish government bonds. As a result, the Wall Street brokerage, already shaken by recent dismissals of several traders for improper dealings, is expected to take a $10-million pretax write-down in the second quarter, a spokesman said. The 34-year-old trader, Peter N.J. Bryant, was fired July 1 after a “routine closing of the books for the second quarter,” John Liftin, Kidder’s general counsel, said in a Wall Street Journal article.