|
Sponsored Links
Nicholas Leeson (born February 25, 1967) is a former derivatives trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank. He is currently CEO of Irish football club Galway United.[1] Leeson was born in Watford, north-west of London. He attended Parmiter's School. After leaving school in 1984, having been in the Sixth Form, he landed a job as a clerk with the exclusive private bank, Coutts, followed by a string of jobs with other banks, ending up with Barings in the early 1990s; by 1992, he was appointed general manager of a new operation in futures markets on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX).[2] Barings had held a seat on SIMEX for some time, but did not activate it until Leeson came aboard. From 1992, Leeson made unauthorized speculative trades that at first made large profits for his employer, £10 million which accounted for 10% of Barings' annual income. He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000. His luck soon went sour, and he used one of Barings' error accounts (accounts used to correct mistakes made in trading) to hide his losses. The account was numbered 88888 -- a number considered very lucky in Chinese numerology. Leeson claims that this account was first used to hide an error made by one of his colleagues; rather than buy 20 contracts as the customer had ordered, she had sold them, costing Barings £20,000.
|
Nick Leeson Subcategories
Nick Leeson Articles
|
|
