How a 28 Year Old Man Destroyed England’s Oldest Bank
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
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This has got to be your best episode yet! Relatively unknown to younger people, captivating until the end, multiple twists and narrated well 👌
Yeah I'm 17 and doing a level economics and this is such a cool video
Agreed, loved it!
The struggle of the original iPhone documentary was the best !
Agreed! Y
You should also Do how an "Tiny East Indian Company" With one Room Office In London Destroyed, Devastated, Plundered India (Holding 23% of World GDP in 17th century) to Poorest Country in 1947 until Blood*** Bri*ish Left.
Years ago I read a book about the home mortgage collapse. One thing that stood out was a statement made by a successful trader. He said "the biggest mistake people can make is to assume that a person holding a high position with decades of experience actually knows what they're doing."
"I have 50 years of experience in this industry."
"The technology you're working with is less than 5 years old."
@ Andrew David
Absolutely true mate. You’re only as good as your last trade.
You know you can just say you read the big short
...and that is exactly how three Nobel Prize winners almost collapsed the entire US financial system once, remember?:)
@@unhhgcrxexhjvuvujchcrzwzwz7956 Wait, are you sure that applies? The old guys knew what was going on in the movie, they just didn't care because they were making money. It was the younger guys who didn't know what was really going on that screwed everything up.
"Do you know what you just did? You just bet against the American economy and you're smiling. That's why I hate this business." - My favorite part of the movie. Just how the guys looked so guilty when it dawned on them how many people were going to suffer so that they could get rich.
Dammit. I'm nearly 29 and I haven't even destroyed a small bank.
Then get to work, what are you waiting for ? Lmao
@Sal Drays kinda an r/woosh, but ill explain: he means he hasnt been able to even destroy a small bank, let alone a big bank.
underated
Just make sure to do it the white collar way. If you smash the actual building down with a JCB without hurting anyone they'll probably give you 15 years. However if you defraud huge numbers of people of their money, destroying their lives and making billions in the process then you'll probably get les than 5 years. White collar crime dude. White collar.
Same :(
I remember this. It wasn't a victimless crime. Don't let the vast sums of money distract from the fact that many 'ordinary' people lost money they hoped to retire on.
Well as long as the rich didn't suffer
@@Praisethesunson That’s why he only served 4 years.
It’s only funny when rich people lose.
And the people who lost their jobs
Without denying the fact that the bank has fucked up majorly, it would be wrong to deny that Nick Leeson is a psychopath. He literally blames the bank for letting him get away with the crime.
Right, and if you watch the full movie about it there was 2 or 3 times when he actually got back to break even on his trades. If i was down 25 mill and got back to even I would be happy and never do it again. Guy went back in 10x deep....
He is right, psychopath or not.🤔
Narcissism and Psychopathy tend to go hand in hand. He is incapable of taking responsibility for his actions. Everything is someone else's fault. Even when he did something wrong it's "oh they would have caught me sooner if they weren't incompetent." Only an idiotic narcissist thinks along those lines and only a psychopath with a damaged amygdala would so fearlessly take on such a idiotic risks.
NPD I reckon
"he was a confident but unimpressive student" - describes more people in finance than you will ever believe.....
Damn I was going to work in finance.
@@josephbrennan370 well all that time you spent studying maths wasn't necessary. What you really need is either 1) grade A contacts 2) dumb luck 3) a sociopath fuck the world attitude that fools idiots I to thinking you are competent. Preferably all three.
@@chiip90 ✍✍✍
..preferably all three..✍✍✍
The only real competence they really check is: Ability to do what they tell you at any means, no conscience to steal money from elders, ability to skip and dodge rules in a sophisticated manner without having remorse.
@@chiip90 "all that time you spent studying maths wasn't necessary" Not when you're skimming along using the algorithms designed by people who DID sit down and study the maths. There are some very very clever people in the financial industry, unfortunately not enough to overcome the majority of people who are just cunning enough to be dangerous, but not cunning enough to fix any cockups they do along the way.
17:25. So a single clerk in Singapore found out about his scam and brought it all down. This one guy outperformed all those teams of highly paid UK auditors and incompetent London execs who just gave him the money. Amazing. Should have put this unnamed clerk in charge.
To the London execs, he was successful. They didn't know he had a secret acct to hide the losses. But yes, you're right, the auditors were incompetent and didn't want to fix something that on its face looked like it was working. The one clerk was the breaking point, but it could have been anyone. It was a matter of time, the one who found out just happened to be the one there to see a $50m loss nick forgot to hide. It's not that the one single clerk was good or bad, just was there at the time. Had nick hid that 50m loss, he would of eventually collapsed on his own, like madoff. It isn't sustainable to have losses running away in a vicious cycle.
@@ctdieselnut Give the guy some credit. He followed up and kept on the fraud's case. How many others noticed discrepancies and did nothing?
very often that a fresh blood accounting clerk find out the discrepancy and track down the huge financial mistakes of the company
@@jialiang4500 it's a poetic justice in a way, since isn't that's how Leeson first built a name for himself within the company?
@@ctdieselnut To the clerk he was successful too, until he actually took the time to look at the paperwork, unlike the auditors.
The most shocking part is undoubtedly the total lack of responsibility or regret Leeson shows. As if other people being incompetent or not diligent were an acceptable excuse to commit fraud. It's horrendous to see he has no empathy for the other employees who lost their job or for the savings that were lost. Kind of a summary of what's wrong with trading
Narcissistic sociopath behaviour
Sociopath
HE IS A NARCISSIST THATS WHY
Thats banking in a nutshell
He deserve the hatred of the endless, including the departed. May the hand of damnation grasp his soul. 😡
I was working at Barings at this time, as a contractor in IT. I'd just been offered a permanent role when Leeson's scams broke the Bank. It was the most surreal situation I've ever lived through. The saddest thing was the amount of good people (who had nothing to do with Leeson's scams) who lost their jobs because of what he'd done.
That’s why I will never understand the often very light penalties for even egregiously reckless and harmful white-collar crimes.
He deserves the worst on this planet
Yeah, because losing a job is the same as getting murdered or sexually assaulted.
@@hellosammy4105 No it's not the same, but a thousand blameless people losing their jobs or pensions, with many suffering great financial hardship as a result, should be punished severely.
@@hellosammy4105a total mass-debater arent you?
That supervisor of Morgan Stanley made the decision of his life not to hire Nick.
Nah @ MS he wouldn't have been able to pass damaging a few % of the assets.
Sounds like they actually had competent employees, the supervisor did his job well
Baring just sounds like a cushy gig for those who don’t want to work
Not really. Like Leeson alluded to, MS had their house in order and would have never allowed for this to happen. On top of that, this sort of strict compliance would probably prevented Nick from gambling this way and, as such, would have enabled him to employ proper risk management strategies to continue be a trader.
Imagine what this guy would've done if he would've survived at Morgan Stanley as a trader during the 2008 bubble
Would’ve been great if he had hired this crook.
9:43 Missed opportunity to say “He had not learnt his Leeson.”
lmao
Jajajjaaja sí !
@@patrickzxwei8398 I did not understand
he said it in the video what am i missing 🤔
he didn't emphasize it
It’s so crazy to me that he can ruin so many lives and he only gets 6 years in prison, imagine all those pension funds all those jobs all that money stolen. And he served four years? Amazing
Now wasn't the judge plain stupid ?
@@jkardez4794just corrupt
@@jkardez4794 well, there should have been multiple crimes and punishments. 4 years for cheating the singapore stock exchange? Fair enough. Now the UK should at charges for... what ever. But I guess that would put all politicians in jails (or hiding in a fridge).
Is this fiction being used to market anything outside of the fiction itself?
There is movie called Rogue Trader starring Ewen McGregor about this story, it's good. We should remember a lot of these older institutions in Britain were employing people who did not necessarily have any skills they were just part of the upper class and got jobs through connections.
Yet he was from Watford.
The biggest devastation was the loss of pensions. My great-uncle lost his private pension overnight that he'd been paying into since he was 16 and spent the rest of his life surviving on government pension.
@Jamal Crocker True. I sometimes really wonders why people glamorize these figures so much even though what they did was essentially a huge and horrendous crime. Remember the wolf of wallstreet? People suffered because of him, pension loss, bancruptsy abounded. Now he even has movies made and people worship him. I was like, what? Why? Totally baffling.
@Jamal Crocker It's looking at the problem, that the people on top constantly step on us ordinary folks, and concluding that the solution is to try and reach the top by stepping on others. It's a sign of a lack of vision, that these people aspire to reach the top and step on others rather than changing the system so they don't have to fear being stepped on.
That's the whole point, the money from all the people like your Uncle was embezzled and stolen then blamed on this clown who only got 4 years.
That is absolutely terrible.
Jesus Christ
This is like 95% the bank's management fault. If one employee, non-executive as well, can bring you down, there is something wrong with your company.
The bankers still believe thay are the masters of the universe none of the big CEO have ever gone down for a long time because thay give the nod but still say to the guys work harder and fight for the scrap that I drop on the floor and one day you might be sitting where I am
Most of these guys least every thing it's just show at the end of the day yet we all fall for it .you can charm people into helping you but when thay want help are you as charming as you where to them when you needed there help
Ha, there is "something" wrong with every single bank on this planet. The wrong is called "fractional reserve system".
Nice victim blaming. Nick Gleason agrees with you: "The fraud wasn't my fault - it was their fault for not catching me!"
All of the fraudsters who victimize people on a daily basis sleep well using your logic.
this's what you get when you employ people in controlling position not because of their skills but because of family relations and loyalty xD
@@dmhendricks But if a company that large didn't discover such a large fraud that can collapse the company, the company has a huge problem
Company is supposed to discover potential shady dealing/fraud from employee or executive, and caught them before it causes heavy damage
It has a lot to do with mismanagement and lack of proper check/balances/audit.
This. THIS sums up our society. A parasite causes massive damage, but instead of punishing him, we make him a celebrity.
And then we wonder why people like Fred Goodwin never get punished for what they did.
Imagine sending 75% or your bank's capital to a 28 years old trader on the opposite of the globe... peak comedy
Greed does that to you....
Very good summary
Clearly they didn’t apply the policy of spreading one’s risks..
That is the simplest prof of incompetance over the entire chain of command. From acauntats and oditors to siniar exects. Its pretty much impossible to have compitant CFO that is not going to see that and say - its OK , noting can go wrong.
Proof, accountants, auditors, senior.
Pretty sure he’s a top tier narcissist. “I can recover a billion dollars” “my boss was stupid to trust me, it’s not my fault lol”
Totally agree and that’s what I thought!
Ha ha ha.
Oh ya, the delusions of grandeur are strong in him too.
Narcissist and probably a sociopath. Based one what was shown here, the guy certainly fits the bill. No matter where he went, I'm sure he would have hurt someone just to benefit himself.
@@fattiger6957 Potentially a full on psychopath. A sociopath wouldnt generally be as high functioning. This guy must have charmed his way around people, to get into this position but to also keep people away from catching him.
I remember this one.
After ING bought bankrupt Barings, my cousin was flown in to London to make sense of the mess.
The moment he landed the British authorities took away his passport so he wouldn't leave the UK unnoticed ....
WHAT
And what happens after that?
I was a teacher at the school Leeson attended, although by that time he was a former pupil. We came in one morning to hordes of reporters hanging around the premises trying to get a salacious quote about him from just about anybody. His maths teacher described him as ‚no intellectual‘.
Math
I like how he calls everyone else bumbling fools but his entire scheme was based around how absurdly terrible he was as a trader.
@@davidwesternall873 yees thank you
he never learned the lesson
90%+ of people are absurdly terrible at day-trading. Unless you're some genius with 140+ IQ don't even think about day-trading.
So many people lost huge amounts of money thinking they were smarter than everybody.
Long term investment though is a whole other animal. Pretty easy to win for many if not most.
Your statement is paradoxical. The mere fact that he was terrible at trading & losing money & kept asking for more & more but never got caught & was simply cursorily (not) audited shows that he is aboslutely right about the management. Bumbling fools & greedy nincompoops.
@@AlphaCentauri24 I didn't say he was wrong about. Him being an incompetent idiot doesn't mean management weren't incompetent idiots. If anything it tells us Barings was in the habit of hiring incompetent idiots. Not sure what you think paradoxes are but this isn't one.
He was simply ahead of his time. If he had come along 10 years later, taxpayers would have had to covere his losses.
That is what they tell you and how the marketed the transfer of social into (more) private money. Wake up- you sheep!
@@ignatziusturret5641 you don’t even know what you’re talking about. Anyone who still uses the term sheep is an imbecile
Yeah... so much for the cautionary tale (20:58)
I hate that this is facts.
They learnt from his mistakes
Only 4 years of prison for such a insane screwup? That’s mental
@themomorain. I agree with you . That narcissist and completely addicted gambler should have been locked up for at least 20 years for the damage he caused to people’s savings and furthermore the dickheads at the bank who allowed him to do it should share a cell with him.
This guy is an absolute piece of work.
You misspelled $hit as work
He is obviously guilty of fraud but as arrogant as he may sound, he's not wrong about the incompetence of the bank's management.
being not wrong and being a f-ing fraud are very different things and dont cancel out
But does he recognize he is as incompetent as them?
@@imicca he's not canceling, as the first thing he said was "he's obviously guilty"
@@skimiii Less incompetence and more moral apathy.
He knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how wrong it was, understood and recognized all the risks and took them willingly.
@@imicca who said anything about canceling out?
When Leeson made back the £10,000,000 by sitting on his position, he basically traversed through a minefield, unscathed, with his eyes closed. So, Leeson thought the best and only way to traverse through such minefields unscathed was with his eyes closed. It was only a matter of time until the whole damn thing blew up in his face.
Also fun fact: Barings was nearly run under by a similar trader based in South America during the early 1900s. His name was also Nick.
So the disaster is going to happen soon or later then if company didn't learn its lesson before
@@789know gold 💀 🤣🤣
So this same thing happened to Barings in the 1900s and it happened again with a dude named Nick.Ain't it have a term for that ,doing same thing over .Oh yeah its called insanity.
@@elizabethmolino8262 bro, early 1900s and 90s are literally 90 years apart. A good 2 or 3 generations. I highly doubt anyone wad around for both situations
@@789know who learned this lesson? Between 90 years, there's a good 2 or 3 generations of employees. It would be like expecting a modern mcdonalds guy to know some Mcdonald menu items from 1960s
What Nick says - "bumbling fools" applies to much of senior and executive management in many companies. The executives do not understand the business they run.
As a born and bred North Londoner...I watched this unfold in the news every day for weeks...I can't imagine being the most hated person in England...it's bad enough I was unloved and unwanted by my mother...but I managed to get through life without causing even a ripple...I had a lot of jobs though...at around same age as Leeson here 28 I had 7 jobs in 1 year...I wasn't trusted with a stapler let alone hundreds of millions...
Why you gotta break my heart like that with that comment about your mother, sir? :(
I bet the stapler would’ve been stolen by you if given the chance
It's the double-down that breaks my heart, if he was a stable and rational person he would have taken the cake back to a cosy position in the bank and eaten it there knowing he did something incredible. Clearly he was more of a professional gambling addict than someone interested in finance and making money.
@@poodymeiner3125 Except when you double it, and then you are on the road to perdition.
That part baffles me, Barings would probably exist and even he coild be a top execute there, it would probably been the perfect crime.
But if he wasn't caught, nobody would know about it, this video would not exist, and you would not be here commenting about it.
@@stevenfallinge7149 What makes you think I'm really here?
He was acting like he was someone on r/wallstreetbets.
Listening to Leeson saying that his employers were "stupid, they don't understand the business, and they should never have been in the position they were in" has the most hilarious sense of unintentional irony to it I've ever seen.
Being dish8nwst/scammer does not necessary make him stupid, h3 could still be wwy smarter than those colleagues
@@basedpatriotLT this is a guy claiming all the people above him shouldn’t have been in the jobs they were in.
Meanwhile he spends years desperately trying to be a trader. Then as a trader he lost over £100million in the space of a few years. He is perhaps the biggest failure of a trader ever seen...so he isn’t exactly one to point fingers at incompetence
@@adamspimbly4706 the main difference was his superior stopped when they got their seats, and he continued showcasing his incompetence through his "trading brilliance". I just wondered where did he felt the wealth? When every cent goes to cover his loses. Maybe he shaved the budget each time he received something.
He lied in ways that, by his own admission, were ludicrous and unbelievable. The reason he was believed was because the bosses were idiots.
Yet I cannot help but think that he's not completely wrong: he HAS fooled his bosses and it is likely that a 200 year old bank selected leadership position more along to lines of family and friends connections (the "right breeding" because this is Britain) rather than competence. Had it been otherwise, he would have not been able to single-handedly bring down the entire bank.
That whole bank (like Leeson) seemed to be in positions they weren't fully qualified for, and mistook surviving for success and business savvy.
I'm sure most of us who work can feel similarly sometimes but it's worrying to think that situation is probably the same for the people in positions of influence and power.
I do remember this episode. It was quite a shakeup here in Singapore. U did a good video. Easy to understand and straight to the point
As someone who works in banking, I have never seen a trader decline to go out for drinks. That was the red flag right there.
There’s an Italian saying....
"Whoever doesn't drink in company is either a thief or a spy."
Some people don’t drink wouldn’t be weird to me.
I've always had a policy of not mixing alcohol and work colleagues. Too easy to send less than spectacular messages to people who matter.
Perhaps he was a friend of Bill W
@@annaleonie2731 this
Gotta love people like this: their attitude narcissism, not afraid, no stress.
He basically YOLO'd away a 200 year old bank.
yeeted
Kind of funny really, if lots of people hadn't lost jobs and their money
Sir, you nailed it.
Mans should’ve bought GME 0 dte calls 50% OTM hahahaha
@@DrJimmy93 leeson probably never even gave them a courtesy apology haha
6 and a half years only is crazy. That's insane.
I remembered this case when he was arrested and repatriated to Singapore 🇸🇬. It was a case in everyone's mind.
Worked in corporate banking for 10 years and we had to take a two week block of leave so that anything wrong we might be doing would show up. We were told it was because of what happened at Barings so you wouldn't be there to hide/cover up/fix stuff. Doesn't stop people trying it, one UK employee went to jail for theft.
I work in finance and we have to take block leave for at least 5-10 days in a row and we're not allowed to log in to the system, go into the office or phone in or email anyone and you can't be contacted either. It's magic.
One of the first signs of trouble is often when someone doesn't want to take holidays. It's really a huge red flag.
same on 2 weeks
We still have those two weeks :) ~ mandatory holidays ~
The financial institution I work for still has this policy. Annual leave
Let me get this straight, this guy ruins a bank, then is put in charge of a soccer club and runs that into the ground, and is now a CEO? Well, if you're going to fail, fail upwards.
Dude is like the perfect villain.
Perfect and hilarious comments..
That way of thinking is pretty common nowadays. A few failed businesses and bankruptcies? Hey, let's make him President of the United States.
@@ed-te1fp Can't speak 3 straight sentences? The Perfect Man for the President of the United States! ahhh Joe Biden.
@Bilal Khalid Yeah the whole thing is sad to watch. MU was debt-free and doing well. Then these Americans show up and pay several hundred million of fake "paper money" to take it over then put the entire debt on MU. Was never their money to begin with, but the debts are real. MU's still over half a billion in debt... And not even going to talk about the terrible football decisions they made...
@@ed-te1fp A few failed....out of literally hundreds that were profitable. Always conveniently leave out that bit of nuance. There are plenty of things to criticize him for but that's not one of them. Most successful entrepreneurs have a few failures their belt. Mark Cuban is one example who has a similar net worth today.
Leeson: "you can trust me to properly move around hundreds of millions of dollars"
Also Leeson: "why would they trust me to move around hundreds of millions of dollars?"
Doctors, Lawyers, & Upper
management in the US and
Europe earn on average
over 150,000 dollars per
year. If you're good at what
you do and hyper-specialized
you can double or even triple
that amount
I was just a teenager in singapore as I watched this story develop in real time. It was MASSIVE news on local TV at the time. thank you for revisiting this for me!
Wow you have some great memory!
It's insane to think a bank would give a single employee three quarters of their money.
No matter how good that guy may be, you need to hedge your bets at least a little bit.
totally crazy, it is their own stupidity, lack of scepticism, control and the culture.
They didn't give him that, they failed to prevent him from taking it. Lack of auditing and controlling.
Especially considering their high end clients & the interest they were paying. They were an elitist bank, like Coutts, their clients needing at time minimum current account of £3k
Absolutely. You would think that they might have learnt something from the mess that Leeson had to clear up in Jakarta, but apparently they had learnt nothing.
Exactly the story doesn't makes sense because it's a lie.
Just noticed this after my millionth watch through of this video but when Dagogo talks about Wall Street and NYC in ‘94 he uses footage that not only looks old but also is old since it has the Trade Towers in it. A nice touch I noticed and shows how much work he puts into his videos.
2011 is not old kid.
@@Failure_Is_An_Option 2001* is old in comparison to how much footage there has been since then, and how much it's advanced
I think you have the best looking and sounding youtube videos. Your content is amazing also but it's those little things that makes me want to rewatch episodes over and over. After watching your Enron episode, I bought The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McClean and have been weirdly interested in finance and fraud. Thanks for the good stuff. You helped me kill cable.
"He saw his coworkers as a means to an end"
Welcome to the entire financial industry bruv.
small correction: the entire corporate culture
@@Panteni87 Correction: Almost all of society bar very few exceptions
what the top management actually thinks of the professionals working under them
@@waverider1674 the worker bees aren't much better
@@wernerbeinhart2320 Is that what you tell yourself to justify your own behavior?
Imagine bringing down an entire bank, one that’s been around for centuries, and getting free after 4 years. That’s fucking wild.
yet having a bag of weed in Singapore would get you a life sentence.
Sounds like he has a massive EGO. & No crystal ball 🔮 in the USA it would of gotten bailed out
That's what made me surprised. Just 4 years ?! I mean people would be ready to gamble their way if they see the punishment is soft.
And then appearing on a TV show
It's an elitist bank he is a legend a cunning smart trickster who harms rich idiots and he spent his money on the homeless and his wife so yeah
I worked for Baring Securities in NY during the time this occurred and it had been a great place to work! It's surreal to see it on youtube.
Very good video! I was planning to watch a few to get a good picture of the case but this one was really thorough and the only one I need :)
I like how he called the bankers idiots yet he failed miserably as a trader. Guess he was right, the bank hired idiots lol.
@hognoxious I said he was right...
Idiots hire idiots...
He failed on trading which is difficult, accountancy and auditing are only mundane ops they really must have been idiots tbh...
@Avaint TF He equally only sometimes succeeded on trading based on random luck. Yes, he was and still is an idiot. He later couldn't manage the finances of an Irish football club. Now he makes money by giving speeches on why companies have to be wary of crooks like himself. Half of his wages for life should be taken away to make up for his criminal behavior. Instead, he's making a career out of it.
@@therzook I was reading he had a doudbling strategy i.e. he was just doubling down each time to try and recoup his losses... Trading but might be hard but Leeson was clearly a terrible trader and an idiot himself.
So.. basically a wallstreetbets member before reddit existed
Exactly what I wanted to comment. GUH
We have winner, folks
@@SteliosMusic Leeson went past the banks personal risk tolerance
I'm not with wallstreetbets, but there are some dumb af, some brilliant
Someone got burned! 😁
Nicely explained story thanks CF.
Funniest quote from Leeson, 'There's no Barings in Watford.'
This guy lived in the same estate as me in Galway, customer in the shop I worked in too. Would barely look at me let alone say hello. Really weird feeling when I was watching Rogue Trader for the first time; one of my favourite actors portraying one of my neighbours, who brought down one of the biggest banks in history!
"He thought he was a genius, but it was only dumb luck" This describes Stock Traders is general pretty well.
"Never mistake a rising market for genius."
Thousands of people thought they were geniuses because they bought some bitcoin in 2019.
stock market is basically a giant ponzi and gambling house convolutedly taped together
@@brinckau call it shitcoin
Dumb luck doesn't make millions of pounds disappear from within the banking industry.
The most unbelievable information about this video is that this man was 28 years old
For real
Shit some 28 year olds been navy seals for 10 years been on 3 deployments traveled the world and killed dozens. 28 is a fuck ton time to live
@@907living6 and he hasn’t experienced any of that but looked 40 at 28 years old
@@kabelo2 🔳 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE, HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE COLD FUSION
Almost still a teenager...
Barings sent one man 75% of their working capital? The lack of internal controls to have noticed and raised a huge red flag is astonishing.
It also goes to show how much blind trust the bank placed in him.
This is profound insight and a real life cautionary tale. Checks and balances are out in place so that game and profit doesn’t infect the integrity.
At the end Leeson brags and says his boss didn’t understand derivatives, seen as he lost 2 billion of the banks money perhaps he didn’t either.
This. Saying that with a stright face...what a massive asshole.
he was a giga chad
collapsing massive banks
@@joelmonteiro1419 seething
he is a psychopath
@@orionxtc1119 ....as are most bankers and financial market traders....please go on....
The guy at MorganStanley was a legend basically for having the intuition for future disaster
I honestly kind of agree with the guy, he really was out there betting it all with no oversight from the bank, that's pretty nuts.
Twenty years after, the focus of your mini documentary is based on the person as it should be. He wrote also two books. First originally named 5 eights account, soon turned to Rogue Trader and was the raw material for the script of the movie with Ewan MacGregor. Second book, about his time in prison, divorce and cancer survival shows the world that he may be a derivatives trader but mostly an actor. He was an inflection point in development of internal control and compliance.
Watch enough of these Cold Fusion episodes, and you'll soon lose confidence in absolutely every corporate entity in the entire world. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty valid modern-day strategy!
I think of corporations as being as competent as the government but they aren't public entities so we don't see their incompetence as visibly.
People have always been dumb, now it’s just easier to hurt people while being dumb
Corporate entity AND PERSON,, I'm Now scared to leave the house tomorrow after binge-watching about 7 hours of Con Artists, I noticed a theme being played among the younger entrepreneurs,, I'm going to be guarding the $10 in my wallet all day tomorrow with an eagle eye patrolling for cons artists out to steal my fortune 🧐🧐
@@MrMambott your mattress might be a safe bet as well
Love your content gets me thru my work break
As a (admittedly young) Singaporean, seeing all the people in huge glasses around 5:42 give me serious retro vibes.
Anarchists: "DESTROY THE BANKS!!!!"
28y old Trader: "Say no more."
Makes me wonder if the other traders in Singapore knew how terrible he was and bet against him, compounding his losses.
@@matthew4497 That works, they all have the same mind-set.
Lmao class solidarity ✊🏾♥️
I have seen how banks work and trust me i dont mind being an anarchist
you either be a part of the system or cant do anyting
🏴🚩
"Forged a Bank loan document with scissors & glue"?? My 3rd grade teacher would have spotted that with the "eyes in the back of her head".
Lmao
In the previous century, documents are send by facsimile. What comes out at the other end is usually difficult to read. I can imagine that his cut and paste work is unnoticed.
Don't forget the part where he had the fax/printer name on the document. Like WTF did those auditors do? They were send specifically for him. They should have been suspicious from the beginning. He was right in one regard, they had allot of incompetents in the company.
I did the same thing in highschool in the 90s with a report for my parents except I used my tongue instead of glue as I was in a rush. They were none the wiser
@@kmwong1786 Even in the previous century, An Auditors Job Duties were to Ensure compliance with established internal control procedures by *examining records, reports, operating practices, and documentation.* keyword: _Examine._ Since they already stumbled upon the £50M loss, then they just accepted a faxed document without doing one second of forensic accounting to investigate?
"Today Barings exists only as a cautionary tale, a lesson to banks across the globe that accountability and careful oversight comes before blind trust and the thrill of profit, and a reminder to longstanding institutions that nothing is eternal".
Lehman Brothers exits the chat.
This guy was r/wallstreetbets in human form. He literally pulled off a yolo dgaf options trade. The man was just ahead of his time.
"How a Team of Horrifically Incompetent Auditors Destroyed England’s Oldest Bank." Fixed.
"Nothing to see here at Enron!" Arthur Andersen, auditor.
I reluctantly have to agree that there were some 'bumbling idiots' as they kept approving the amounts he requested. This truly happens in so many organisations it's insane.
He actively deceived them by hiding losses and faking profits. That doesn't make them idiots.
@@jondoe406 Giving 75% of your capital to one futures trader makes you an idiot. The bank's lack of oversight and general operational management is astounding.
@@YourLocalCafe not to mention bank management ignored some red flags that were thrown up by those who are working with Lesson. As mentioned in the video, management was willing to turn a blind eye, as long as Leeson continued making massive profits.
@@jondoe406 Obviously the managers at Barings were in denial blinded by profit and greed...this happens to a lot of people...a common human weakness which will always exist.
In a company who has known long periods of stability it is difficult to raise the alarm about serious issues. Why risk your career by making statements that go against the grain?
Quite enjoyed this episode.
On an aside, I know absolutely nothing about banking, financials, or the stock market. However, I don't think the bank management knew either and that's pretty impressive since they absolutely should have. Of course, hindsight is, as they say, 20/20, the red flags were obviously there if management had actually cared to pay attention. The obvious red flags should have been: his blatant dislike of bankers. No matter how hard someone tries to hide their dislike for someone, you can't fake it in your eyes or expressions when talking to colleagues.
The fact that they didn't do any background check I freely admit that perhaps that isn't something that is commonly done in the UK but... he had a resume... did they not think to... call around? Why on EARTH would they hire someone to be a stock broker with no prior education and no prior experience in exchanging of stocks? And finally, what made me realize that the bank's management was completely incompetent was the fact that he kept asking them to send him money (could have been a daily thing, a weekly thing, or only monthly) but why would they give it to him without asking to see the data?
On top of all of that... when an internal audit is requested, the auditer did not properly do his job either. Just because on the surface it appeared that he was making the bank money, that shouldn't have mattered in the slightest during an AUDIT. Audits are extremely time consuming, pretty thorough, and should have most definitely exposed him as a fraud. Especially if he was constantly asking for large sums of money and I don't care how much money he was making the bank, the fact that he was doing it so often should have been at the very least looked into. When they handed him that final payment, I was actually totally blown away. Was it 60% of the banks funds?
So as arrogant as he is, management absolutely failed anyone and everyone who trusted them with their hard earned money. Although it wasn't mentioned I do hope that the management got absolutely reemed and arrested to.
The fact he doesn’t take responsibility for DECEIVING his employer, no matter how simple it was that the proper analysis of his submissions by his employer could possibly have found his deceptions, is not an excuse for his made deceptions, especially of the fact he continued deceiving.
He obviously has no remorse, so he should have had a very stiff penalty, not an easy penalty, which he did.
@@alexandraocsovan9580 I disagree. He describes one side of successful people in business - the talker. Most of the top people know how to talk to anyone about anything and get what they want. Seems he can do that, or at least if he finds the right audience.
But they also generally have something to offer, and are highly skilled as well. That's not the case for him. He only managed to get away with it due to incompetence from others, not because he was brilliant. And he didn't seem to have any other skills - hence why he was passed over at Morgan Stanley
@@tensemurm5924 what has any of that piffle got to do with his unwillingness to accept any responsibility. You might fail to lock your doors at night but if you get robbed that's still down to the robber.
@Redacted What are you talking about? I was replying to a comment which got deleted, I never said anything about taking responsibility.
@@tensemurm5924he was just a conman. Making up lies about his work of which he was employed to do. Yes, his submitted work wasn’t checked but it’s not an excuse to get away with it.
I don’t know what statement you were replying to but I see no value in what he did. Why? It’s because it’s based on lies which are clearly not real and not based in reality.
@@domenicsandri2740 The other reply was essentially saying that if the guy had gone legit, he likely would have been a top businessman because all the top business people are charismatic and some other shit.
My point was that top businessmen are usually charismatic/talkers, but they also have skills and something to offer. This guy is a talker, but he didn't have anything to offer so he wouldn't have been successful without lying (hence why he was repeatedly rejected).
The way Peter Norris shuffles around uncomfortably during the interview at 18:35 is gold
True
from my eyes, he is covering someone
A classic sociopath. Absolutely no regret or sense of empathy for people who suffered because of the frauds he perpetuated. Yes, he's probably right in his dismissive attitude towards Barings' executives and staff who never questioned what he was going, but he is unable to see what he did was wrong. And he didn't really pay for it.
@@DunDeeoZ your comparison to people dying in Nicaragua or in my country is not equivalent. The original comment was about the fact that he caused those people to suffer, it was his actions. Your comparison works if it was my actions that caused those 100 people to die or whatever, because then I am actually responsible and should feel remorse for what I’ve done. If I have no connection then of course I have no reason to feel much
@@DunDeeoZYou need to slow down and think about what you are blabbering about. Apples and oranges? Both round fruits.
That was my instant thought the moment they talked about how this guy used his colleagues like tools. Big red flag.
you can see it in his face and mannerisms. Had a teacher like that once, total prick.
The guy knew what he wanted, he knew how to get it (apart from the whole being a competent trader) and in the end was just another trader who didn't know when to stop. Clearly not the genius everyone made him out to be
i work in singapore at raffles place where his office was (that whole block has since been demolished), nobody has heard of nick leeson there but there's still a barings holdings office
These videos are so addictive! Thanks for making
This has been my favourite TV channel for years now.
Colfusion is #1, i used to love the daily conversation but he disappeared
I also have 2 signed hoodies of new thinking, one white and the other is navy
🟦 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE, HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE COLD FUSION
Haan bhai, accha channel hai.
Your work is great and ultra-consistent!! We love it
That's what barings thought about leeson 😂😂😂 famous last words
You guys do outstanding work, great video ColdFusion!!!
I remember Nick Leeson's name ffrom when this happened. Thanks for finally explaining it so I now understand how it happened. What a trip.
Imagine for a second being able to throw away 2 billion dollars and only be given 4 years of (probably very soft) prison.
Meanwhile people are locked up in basically zoos for life because they had weed on them.
Insane.
Man its almost like the system is made to keep the small small and the big big.
If he served his prison sentence in Singapore then it most definitely wasn’t “soft”. Imagine being locked up with a thousand or more criminals of all sorts and not speaking the language.
@@prepperjonpnw6482 He probably knew some Singapore language
@@mishayt1989 also it's Singapore, most criminals are not vicious violent criminals from gangs, and a lot of them know English too.
No ones going to prison for life because of some weed, but I get ur point
Glad to see you sometimes cover scammers getting destroyed 👍
Good work, great information in here, thank you.
It's a never-ending story with banks. Once every several years they commit the same crimes and get away with it.
Yup. All that fraud probably hid millions which went to the auditors to cover for him. Imagine countless fraudulent documents, 200 million stolen, being a fugitive, and only spending 4 years in prison. Meanwhile in the USA they try and put old ladies in prison for the rest of their lives for tresspassing. Must be nice to be in the good old boys club
That's not accurate. These kinds of things happen in certain jurisdictions & under certain regulators. London is particularly notorious. The banks may be from all over the world, but it is there where the catastrophic losses take place.
It's so true
This just a random facebook rant? Leeson scammed a bank causing it to go bankrupt. What was the crime the bank committed?
@@moranii1843
Bank is made up off certain people. The bank gives certain mentality
According to Wiki: "Between 2005 and 2011, Leeson had senior management roles at League of Ireland club Galway United. After the club suffered financial difficulties he resigned from his position as chief executive officer." Why would anyone hire this man in any sort of financial capacity??? Lol.
League of Ireland is disgustingly corrupt. So birds of a feather
Moral bankruptcy
@@raumshen9298 . And utter Greed.
Ha i remember that. Also I'm pretty sure he had a financial advice column in the local paper
LOL
Awesome content, the start " You are watching cold fusion tv" is a great intro. Keep it up
An ironic situation, a bank with workers who have degrees in financial and business management, yet not a single one of them from the CEO downward thought to implement a weekly reconciliation and report of money going out of the bank and money coming in. It would've highlighted pretty quickly that the bank was losing money and then traced it back to Leeson. It's like something out of a comedy show if it wasn't so serious.
The bank thought they had a new Leeson life, but they were actually losing their Barings...
Hear hear 👏
Why does this not have more likes
😊😊😊
😂😂😂 I hate you!
Nice 😂😂
OMG “Rogue Trader” is a great book, I’ve read it at least 3 times. Really brings you into the grinding sense of doom as the guy spent 2 years digging himself deeper into a hole day after day expecting to be caught out any minute.
It’s akin to a method of fraud called Teeming & Lading
I prefer 'The Collapse of Barings" - more accurate imo (given my direct experience/knowledge of what happened)
Same deal with Bernie Madoff if you read any books on him. He spent decades living day after day that he would get caught. When he thought he had been just like this guy some odd luck due to incompetence.
I have that book. Also have the DVD.
@@beev thanks, I’ve had that book on my wish list, I’ll get it soon.
Leeson about Barings: "they're stupid" and "they had a lot of idiots basically in every one of the controlling functions".
I completely agree.
Very informative. Thanks!
Watching Leeson's interviews is like peering into the mind of a sociopath.
EDIT: As a lot of people have pointed out Leeson is a psychopath rather than a sociopath. Thanks to those who cleared it up in the comments. 😊
My thoughts exactly. Zero empathy for what he'd done
💯
Agreed, its like a human manifestation of the actual laws that protected him.
Nah, he's a psychopath not a sociopath. Sociopaths are more aggressive and can't maintain a calm state of mind like psychopaths.
He's still a person and he's only doing what felt natural.
A local savings bank took 5 years to tell me that I still owed $1800 on a voluntary vehicle repossession from 2013. When I told them that this is shockingly poor management of your books they said it had fallen through the cracks and ‘we’re starting to catch up with these’. These? How many does the word ‘these’ represent? How many people owe you money from years ago?
It's a legal matter: bank A buys bank B, and that means bank A has to wait for legal transfer of assets & liabilities before they can trade those assets or collecting those debts; the ones that used to belong to bank B. If bank C comes along & buys bank A, bank C has to wait for the B to A transfer before they can execute their own transfer of C assets. In an era of mergers & acquisitions, this process can not only take years, it can be effectively perpetual.
In some industries it’s always the customers fault. Banks, airlines, etc. They couldn’t care less literally.
In South Africa, if no one contacts you for 3 years or longer, by law the debt prescribes automatically...as long as you do not acknowledge it
Lol they said somebody gonna pay us so they made up some bs lol
@@ronaldwilliams4053 that's precisely how the meeting went
4 years... holy shit. People go to jail for a much longer time without destroying thousands of peoples savings.
Yes
I clearly recall this incident as I have been a derivative and commodity trader .
The beauty is that this guy wasn’t even educated / experienced enough to do this .
Too bad what happened .
He may be arrogant in his ending statement in the video interview but he is absolutely right. Absolutely right! The bank management were bumbling fools. It is not even like he was some super smart con artist.
It's like a serial killer saying police were fools they couldn't save the victim from him
@@NoName-kq5gl absolutely not
@@NoName-kq5gl If serial killer had a knife covered in blood while police was interrogating him and cleared his name. It's right for serial killer to say they were fools.
It's almost always people at higher levels that should be responsible. I agree.
@@NoName-kq5gl agreed
This happened so long ago, making that fake fax involved actual cutting and actual pasting 🤣
They should make a film about this. It's really interesting!
They did make a film called rogue trader starring Ewan McGregor
Gotta say his is the most epic perp walk I've ever seen
I'm consistently amazed at the quality of these independent productions.
Thank you, T'GoGo and all the production team involved.
pretty sure the name is Dagogo according to the credits but I might be wrong :p