February 25, 1967

Swindler

Nicholas “Nick” Leeson was twenty-eight when he bankrupted England’s Barings Bank, one of the world’s oldest lending institutions. He was working for the bank’s Singapore office when he got into trouble in late 1994. His previously successful trading strategy was thrown off by changes in the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) market, specifically Japan’s Nikkei index. By February 1995 he and his wife had fled the country. After he was apprehended in Germany, Leeson was returned to Singapore, where he served a sentence for forgery and was released in 1999. He wrote the book Rogue Trader, which was made into a movie starring Ewan McGregor.

On the way to Barings Bank

Born in Watford, a suburb of London, England, Leeson grew up in a working-class environment. His father, Harry, worked as a plasterer and the family lived...