In The Collapse of Barings, Stephen Fay investigates the facts behind the headlines and discovers a closed network of privilege, greed, and incompetence. In the rapidly changing system of global finance, the directors of Barings came to rely on people they hardly knew - like Nick Leeson - to make their fortunes in markets they did not fully understand, like SIMEX in Singapore. The plasterer's son from Watford was still in his mid-twenties when he rose to become the golden boy of Barings, claiming to have made profits of ten million dollars in one week. His London bosses watched passively as a culture of speculation grew until it eventually destroyed them, and changed the face of London's financial heartland.
