Tuesday, June 22, 1999 Published at 15:58 GMT 16:58 UK
Business: The Economy
How Leeson broke the bank
Nick Leeson guessed he faced jail when he was extradited to Singapore
It was the 1980s. Traders were young and greed was good.
Nick Leeson, a working class lad from Watford, the son of a plasterer, was chuffed to land a job in the purportedly-glamorous world of the City of London in 1982.
It was a relatively low-grade job, but he quickly made a name for himself. He worked his way up, becoming a whiz-kid in the hardworking atmosphere of the far eastern currency markets.
By 1993, a year after his arrival in Asia, Leeson had made more than £10m - about 10% of Barings's total profit for that year.
In his autobiography Rogue Trader, Leeson said the ethos at Barings was simple: "We were all driven to make profits, profits, and more profits ... I was the rising star."
He and his wife Lisa enjoyed a life of luxury that the money brought.
He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000.
Deeper and deeper
But in 1994, his luck began to run out when the markets turned against him, the downturn accelerated by the economic impact of the earthquake in Kobe, Japan.
By autumn that year, the losses stood at £208m. Leeson requested and obtained extra funds to continue his trading activities, as he attempted to extricate himself from the financial mess by more and more frenetic deals.
Barings faced collapse.
Leeson had hidden the losses in an obscure account called Error Account 88888, which went to different managers from the house accounts.
When he was discovered, Leeson and his wife went on the run, first to Borneo, then to Frankfurt, but he was arrested and then extradited from Germany back to Singapore.
Disaster for life and bank
Barings, the UK's oldest merchant bank, finally crashed and was bought for £1, by the Dutch banking and insurance group ING.
Dozens of executives who were implicated in the failure to control Leeson resigned or were sacked.
Leeson pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
During his detention, he was diagnosed as suffering from colon cancer and had surgery last autumn.
His marriage broke down and Lisa remarried.
After his conviction, Leeson wrote Rogue Trader, in which he condemned the practices that allowed him to gamble with such large amounts of money unchecked.
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