The Barings Bank collapse was adapted into a 1990s film called "Rogue Trader," which

followed Nick Leeson's market trading trip to ruin. Nick Leeson is a former derivatives trader
most known for bankrupting Barings Bank, the UK's oldest merchant bank. It would be
ridiculous to place all of the blame on a single unscrupulous trader. I believe that both externally
and internally causes contributed to the demise of Barings Bank.

To begin with, Leeson was using the bank's funds to make market bets in an attempt to
recoup his trading losses. Leeson was able to hide the losses from his faulty transactions in a
hidden account because Barings had assigned him the job of double-checking his own deals
rather than reporting them to a superior. Leeson began taking ever larger bets in an attempt to
recoup lost funds.

Second, Nick and the members of the organization had not anticipated the risks in each
transaction, and the debt that resulted in bankruptcy was not that large. To demonstrate, the
upper management placed too much trust in Nick's "brilliance," believing that all of the accounts
he opened in the bank were legitimate.

Third, there was no record of each and every trade. Nick Leeson lied about putting a large
sum of unlawful stocks and cash out. He also duped the executives by stealing money from the
company's account and claiming it as his own profit, as well as stealing more from his clients
and claiming he only borrowed a handful. Despite uncovering some irregularities or gaps in the
records, as well as the sub-account five 8's, the audit department elected to trust Leeson and
disregard the suspicions.

Leeson was imprisoned in Germany, and Barings declared bankruptcy on February 26,
1995, following a failed bailout attempt. Leeson was charged with fraud because he misled his
superiors about the risks of his activities and the magnitude of his losses. In Singapore, he was
sentenced to six and a half years in prison.