Book dossier

Rogue trader

by Nicholas William Leeson, Nick Leeson, Edward Whitley

Few news stories have grabbed the world's headlines quite like the collapse of Barings merchant bank in late February 1995. Trusted with the finances of royalty, aristocracy, and major corporations for more than two hundred years, Barings had apparently been brought down by the covert trading activities of just one man, leaving the bank with losses of over $1 billion. Rogue Trader takes us from Leeson's humble beginnings as the son of a plasterer to the very heart of the. cutthroat empire he made his own: SIMEX, the Singapore money market that witnessed both Leeson's phenomenal rise to prominence and his devastating fall from grace. It is a portrait of organized chaos, revealing not only the frenetic culture of the trading pit, but also the ways in which Leeson dealt with his losses, avoided detection, and became the object of an international manhunt that sparked the most extraordinary news story in recent years. Pressure, pace, error: Leeson reveals the inside story of this amazing chain of events. With a narrative as crisp as any thriller, Rogue Trader is the fascinating account of a man shaped by events that proved to be beyond his control.