Nick Leeson and the Fall of Barings Bank

Nick Leeson hid a £10,000 trading error in a secret account in 1992 — by February 1995, it had grown to £827 million and destroyed Barings Bank, Britain's oldest merchant bank, founded in 1762. Operating from Singapore, Leeson controlled both the trading floor and the back office, meaning no one reconciled his positions for two and a half years. The Kobe earthquake on January 17, 1995 dropped the Nikkei 1,000 points and triggered the final collapse — Leeson fled, left a note saying 'I'm sorry,' and was arrested at Frankfurt Airport. ING bought the entire bank for £1.🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#NickLeeson #BaringsBank #RogueTrader #FinancialHistory #BankingScandal #Nikkei #TradingScandal #FinanceHistory #MarketCollapse #TrueCrimeFinance