Laquinti Huntsberry
BUFW F575-01W
Barings Bank
Description:
Barings bank was a British merchant bank founded in 1762 making it one of the oldest banks
and most stable banks in history. Barings bank is also renowned in history for facilitating the
Louisiana purchase(ethicalsystems.org). Being one of the oldest banks Barings had a reputation
and rich history of trading and facilitating large deals, trades and sell offs for the British
government, Untied States and others. Fast forward, in 1992 Barings bank posted Nick Leeson
to a position to manage the back office at Barings Futures Singapore. Nicks journey to this
position was preceded by positions in the settlement department after learning about trading
futures in Japan. Trading futures is describes as buying a commodity on a contract or
agreement to sell it in the future at a specific price and time. He also held a role in Indonesia in
which he was positioned to sort through 100 million worth of back office contracts after which
he returned to London to investigate fraud in Barings derivatives trading. This skillset prepared
Leeson for his role in Singapore. Leeson secured a trading account created in error in 1992 that
he the used for his own purposes and excluded from reporting. Using this account Leeson was
able to secure trades acting as a customer but accumulating the losses in the account and since
he was also in charge of the back office he was essentially approving his own trades with little
