Nick Leeson
| Nick Leeson | |
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| Born |
Nicholas William Leeson 25 February 1967 Watford, England, United Kingdom |
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| Website | nickleeson |
Nicholas William "Nick" Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is a former derivatives broker whose fraudulent, unauthorised speculative trading caused the spectacular collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest merchant bank, for which he was sentenced to prison. Since 1999 he became, and subsequently resigned as, the CEO of League of Ireland club Galway United, and has now partnered with an eLearning educator named Bizintra, mentoring new and experienced traders in avoiding the common pitfalls of trading the financial markets. He is also active on the keynote and after-dinner speaking circuit where he advises companies about risk and corporate responsibility.
Leeson was born in Watford, where he attended Parmiter's School. After finishing school in 1985 his first job was as a clerk with a private bank, Coutts. He then moved to Morgan Stanley in 1987 for two years, and then to Barings in 1989.
In 1992, he was appointed general manager of a new operation in futures markets on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX). Barings had held a seat on SIMEX for some time, but did not activate it until Leeson was sent over. Leeson was sent to Singapore after he was denied a broker's licence in the United Kingdom because of fraud on his application. Neither Leeson nor Barings disclosed this denial when Leeson applied for his licence in Singapore.
From 1992, Leeson made unauthorised speculative trades that at first made large profits for Barings: £10 million, which accounted for 10% of Barings' annual profit. He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000 for that year.
However, Leeson's 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 – 8 being a number considered to be very lucky in Chinese numerology as it rhymes with "Prosper". However, as this also reads as "Five 8s", where "Five" in Cantonese rhymes with "won't" or "without", the net phrase is "Won't Prosper". 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.
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Wikipedia