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The Collapse of Barings | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Fay
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1081461
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 310
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0393040550
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.645
EAN: 9780393040555
ASIN: 0393040550
Publication Date: January 1997
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Amazon.com Review
Stephen Fay's book The Collapse of Barings joins a growing list of contemporary accounts of the banking scandal that brought down England's most prestigious investment bank. The financial calamity that Nicholas Leeson unleashed through his unauthorized trading was so grand in scope that the story seemed likely to be of great interest as well. A story about a "rogue trader" in Singapore who could destabilize finances worldwide and bring down the Queen's bank has so many angles worthy of exploration, from the character of Leeson to the technology that made it possible, from the history of Barings to the nature of global finance, that you can't blame writers for rushing in to chronicle it. But with Leeson's own tell-all tome Rogue Trader, and the excellent account Total Risk: Nick Leeson and the Fall of Barings Bank by Judith H. Rawnsley, as well as a fascinating chapter on the Barings scandal in Martin Meyer's book The Bankers: The Next Generation, the story has largely been told. Nevertheless, Stephen Fay is an excellent business writer, and his book is an adept study of Leeson and the damage he did to banking and Barings. Fay pays particular attention to the British reaction to the Barings collapse and uncovers anglophile angles previously overlooked. Those looking for another take on the Barings scandal or an exhaustive collection of Barings books will snatch this book up with no regrets.
Product Description
When Nick Leeson masterminded the illegal trading scheme that would lose $1.3 billion in assets belonging to Barings, one of the oldest and most respected banks in London, the story was front page news around the world. But what really happened to cause the downfall of "the Queen's Bank, " and who was actually responsible? Fay investigates the facts behind the headlines and discovers a closed network of privilege, greed, and incompetence.
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| Customer Reviews:
Though fading into history, this story is still interesting to me... October 12, 2005
aseclyst (Short Hills, NJ USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The story of Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings happened 10 years ago, but it continues to hold my imagination. Perhaps I had been captivated by Barings' former mystique. Stephen Fay's book is well researched and may be the best of the "Barings" books (I have not yet read the others). It appears to be a well balanced account which takes in what (the hell) Leeson says he was up to and compares it against the official investigations, observations of others in the firm, and adds a dash of common sense, in an attempt to try to provide a total picture of the debacle.
One thread running through Fay's book is the weakness of Barings' control systems; the Bank was apparently attempting to enter the 21st century with 19th century risk management techniques. Another subtext is that a lot of the successful management alchemy that had driven Barings in its Victorian heyday had been bred out of the firm by the time Nick entered the picture, so that top executives lacked the necessary antennae to tune into or uncover the risks which Leeson was exposing them to. I admit there is a lot of strength to the argument that there was a lot of willful ignorance going on with all of Leeson's fake profits to prop up the bottom line, as Fay says:
"Greed is the easiest of the...motives to understand. In the old days, most of the Baring family - especially those who worked in the bank - were very comfortably off. Their motives were a blend of influence in [London], social position and a bit of public service. The clerks were not greedy because they were in no position to be. Big Bang in 1985 altered that, and the fast growth of derivatives markets in the late 1980s changed it beyond recognition. Having transferred their last shares to the Baring Foundation, the directors now relied on bonuses to earn good money. But much of the firm's profit now depended on the people who had once formed the function of the clerks."...like Leeson, who was on his way up from that station.
A strength of the Fay text is that it is completely devoid of a tabloid approach to the whole topic. There are not even any pictures, certainly not of Lisa Leeson in tears, unless you count Nick in handcuffs on the dust jacket (I am also excepting photocopies of memos and faxes, which are informative). This book is written with an organization that an auditor could love, and apprentices at the major securities trading firms of the world could do worse than read this book on their first day of employment.
Perhaps it doesn't matter looking back that the Bank of England failed to bail Barings out; I hope that the folk once employed there have gradually made their way in the world, I even hope the (still married?) Nick & Lisa have sorted out their lives. Barings seems like an antique, a fine piece of China that finally fell off a shelf and shattered. It could have been different, if Christopher Heath's trading culture had been better melded with the Bank's stuffy side; if they had, earlier on, spent GBP 10 million on that fancy new trading system called BRAINS (and figured out Nick before he figured out how to hack it); if they had roused themselves earlier to investigate various holes in their trading accounts and tracked down the origin of the SLK receivable. If only, if only, if only... Such are the decisions of life.
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