Word: leesons
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...Tuesday Feb. 21, amid the pit's uproar, Leeson replied quite evenly to a question from an A.P.-Dow Jones reporter curious about rumors that the Englishman was making huge purchases on the Japanese and Singapore exchanges on behalf of his London-based investment bank. Leeson coolly explained that he was "buying Nikkei futures here and selling them there." As simple as that, nothing out of the ordinary. One of Leeson's colleagues at another Barings office in Asia told Time of a phone call with Leeson two days later. "He sounded really weird on the phone, like...
...trading that day, Leeson gathered up his notes, walked off the floor and began his getaway. By 11:30 that night, he was out of Singapore, checking into a hotel in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, 200 miles to the north. At 7 a.m. on Friday, his wife reportedly jumped into a cab and headed for the airport. In his wake lay a venerable 232-year-old British banking empire rendered suddenly and irretrievably insolvent; half the financial world was reeling in fear, the other half in astonishment. On his office desk was a handwritten note that said...
...could such an illustrious institution come to such an ignominious end? Was it mismanagement or conspiracy? Was it fraud or simply more proof of the treacherousness of those chimerical financial instruments called derivatives? At the moment Leeson, detained in Germany after a week on the run, is the only one who knows the answer to those questions, and last week he wasn't talking. Still, what is already known of his strategy and what could be teased out through interviews with far-flung friends and colleagues suggest a tale of arrogance and greed on a grand scale...
...BARINGS ONLY KNOWN ... TIME has learned that at one point late last year, another bank was thinking of hiring Nick Leeson away, but a corporate headhunter contracted to analyze Leeson's abilities recommended against it. There was nothing wrong with his background or performance. The headhunter just "didn't trust him." His report went on to describe Leeson as "very bright but it might be quickness without any underlying depth ... After you have Leeson for six months he might hold you up for a bigger package...
...Leeson certainly had the quickness to rise at Barings at a time when a "bite the ass of a bull-every day" attitude-as a British securities executive describes it-was beginning to infect the bank's stiff and cautious culture. In the early '90s, the London headquarters of Barings was struggling with the division that championed derivatives-financial instruments that use the public's massive bet on securities to create a parallel universe of side bets, some straightforward (like futures) and others arcane (like swaptions). Derivatives helped the Tokyo unit make huge amounts of money-the kind of money...