Rogue trader calls for smarter regulation to avert disaster

By John Leyden
The Register
26th October 2009

RSA Europe 2009 - Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who bankrupted a bank before it became fashionable, said that unless the quality of regulation improves, further financial disasters such as the Barings Bank collapse he precipitated are inevitable.

Leeson, told journalists at the RSA Europe conference on Thursday that little has changed in the 14 years since his actions resulted in losses in excess of 827m ($1.3bn) and the collapse of Barings in 1995. He told delegates that fraud management systems with appropriate knowledge-based rules are the only way to expose the cavalier risk taking he carried out during three years at Barings.

Better regulation - not tighter or looser regulation - was needed, Leeson argued.

As an ambitious 25-year-old, Lesson travelled over to Singapore in 1992 to establish a business for Barings in the futures and derivatives market. Early successes were soon replaced by losses which Leeson disguised by pushing losses into an error account (called 88888). He covered these losses by obtaining an overdraft, with daily funds from London keeping the bank afloat as the losses and overdraft swelled. It was only when other banks called in the debt that the situation collapsed.