Nick Leeson is an interesting guy. In the videos they show some parts of an interview Nick did. Nick did not look worried about the money he wasted. He thought it was the managers fault the bank failed because they were idiots to not discover what he did.
Was Nick Leeson was doing high risk trades and hiding his losses. Managed the office in Singapore. He told the office in London that he was making profits. Nick was not a good trader. He had to hide his losses in a 88888 account.
It is strange that they did not discover what he was doing. They were close many times. There were people traveling to the office in Singapore to check what he was doing. Even auditors did not discover his 88888 account.
After some losses Nick had to get money from London. They sent him money nearly everyday. They believed it was short term loans to customers. The London office started to wonder why he needed so much money and who were the customers.
When asked after the collapse most people at the London office said that it was not their job to check where the money went. Some said only the Singapore office had the figures so it was impossible the check anything. Some said they believe everything was OK after talking to Nick.
Nicks losses was not so bad from 1993 to the end of 1994. The bank could have survived that. In the beginning of 1995 it started to go downhill fast. Nick had made a mistake and not hidden a bad trade. There was a lot of talking about that at Barings in the beginning 1995. Nick convinced many that it was only an error and it will be corrected. Some company wanted £150M from Barings. Nick used papers and scissors to make a document that looked like he got the money back. In the upper corner there was a text that said “Nick and Lisa”. He sent it from his home to the office. Those who looked at it thought it was real.
In the beginning of 1995 Nick started to do big high risk trades. On 17 January there was a earthquake in Kobe, Japan. Nicks trades started to go bad. He tried to buy lots of futures to get the market to go up. The market continued to go do down. On the 23 of February Nick left the office and never came back. There were rumours about Barings having big positions on OSE. The managers in London were not worried there should be positions on SIMEX to compensate.
Best document to read.