Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World
Author: Nicholas William Leeson, Nick Leeson, Edward Whitley
List Price: $24.95
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ISBN: 0316518565
Publisher: Little Brown & Company (March, 1996)
Sales Rank: 101,514
Average Customer Rating: 3.58 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 2 out of 5
Surprisingly unsophisticated
Somehow Nick Leeson ended up with the reputation as some kind of whiz kid but reading this book you get a different sense. The derivatives Mr. Leeson was trading do not seem particularly sophisticated (don't compare this to LTCM). But you wouldn't learn much about them from this book. I got the sense that Mr. Leeson was grappling with very basic financial questions. As a consequence, the book tends to be repetitive in a description of losses getting out of control and the soap opera building around that. You also have a nagging feeling that you never get the full story. However, the book is interesting where it describes the complete breakdown of financial and management controls.
Rating: 4 out of 5
When everything goes wrong
Compelling story of the rise and hard fall of one of the "Master of the Universe". Leeson tell his side of the story in a frank and honest way descibing his mistakes, bad luck and arrogance in a build-up of events that will end up in disaster. At the end of the book you can only wonder: for one that failed and got caught, how many walked away with clean hands?
Rating: 4 out of 5
Mercy Killing
Nicely written account of the incredible story of Baring's failure. Traders will appreciate Leeson's inside perspective on big time floor trading as well as the excruciating madness to which he descends in the face of unimaginable losses and eight-figure margin calls. Leeson was a bad trader, good liar and compulsive gambler. A bad mix. Add to that profit hungry executives who fed Leeson's addiction with Baring's entire capital stock, and you end up with a busted bank. When he's finally caught, a prison mate tells Nick, "It was a mercy killing. If you hadn't done it someone else would've." Capitalism, for good or ill, is wonderfully efficient at transferring wealth from weak hands to the strong. The surprise is not that the 232-year old Barings went bust overnight, but rather, that it lasted so long in such incompetent hands. There are those among the British elite who flourish only because the Establishment takes care of its own, even the idiot cousins. Barings had more than its share of these.
The real tragedy of this story is not the wrecking of Barings, but the wrecking of Lisa Leeson who, by all accounts, was an angel. Everyone else got what they deserved, but she was truly the innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.
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