I remember reading "Around the world in 80 days" as a kid. I was surprised by the fact I learned from a footnote left by the translator saying that Barings bank had survived hundreds of years and is still in the business. Little did I know, the book was a hand-me-down from my youngest uncle and was quite outdated.
ORORORORO!!! I spend half of my day sleeping! ORORORO!!! Then I sometimes get up and tell you that I am a famous content creatorORORORORO!!! Please don't sleep while driving, dear tom
As an accountant, it blows my mind that no one anywhere along the way saw this ballooning account on the trial balance and asked, "What the heck is that?"
Yeah a £20k account I can imagine being easily overlooked, even a £2mil one. But once you go into the hundreds of millions of pounds, it’s insane nobody even asked what it is
@@johnkeefer8760 Exactly. The early stages, if the bank doesn't break down their financial analysis by entity, country, etc I can understand why it was overlooked. Even then though, less common accounts (like error accounts) are noticed/questioned even sooner. Also if the track percent change, this would have had a flag on it so fast.
@@mattb154 I suppose that's a fair point. Whenever something undesirable is found, the question always seems to be, "Why did you spot this sooner?" So if someone is scared, they might not mention it and hope it resolved itself. Very bad idea.
@@aspenin it's normal he was trying to make money with little money. Just like we regular folks have to do it. The reason he was successful with the bank before this happened is because he had to do it with lots of money. It is easy to make money with lots of money, but it is very easy to lose tons of money with little money.
@@ichigokurosaki7762 it’s not normal to go from 20k loss to 1.4 billion loss, and either way your point of him trying to make money with little money has no validity if that was the reason he failed then they must not of had hardly any money to begin with, at the beginning it was only a 20k loss leaving them with tons of money to make 20k back which should have been easy according to your logic
One has to take into consideration that Nick got into his position by actually bringing in a lot of revenue and profit, he didn't fumble into the position, he actually earned it. Then failed spectacularly.
Barings just kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, they had an completely incompetent auditing process that let his fraud fly under the radar for years. It was insane.
@@MrNight-dg1ug cause this is literally our whole entire "justice" system in a nutshell and it's DISGUSTING how the rich are allowed to do whatever they want while the poor are murdered and enslaved in private prison factories for far less substantial crimes
What's hilarious is he was probably getting paid millions as a top-level trading manager so the original $20,000 mistake he was trying to cover up was not even a week's worth of his salary
His actual salary was only around £50,000 before bonuses which themselves often amounted to 3/4 times his base salary worth. He currently lives not too far away from me in Galway, Ireland and he previously owned the local football club Galway United. The reality is that in a career in finance, the satisfaction and purpose is derived from making the money, not necessarily personally receiving it. Obviously lived lived a lavish lifestyle for a short time but he didn't see the slightest fraction of what he made.
Whilst it's evident Leeson was the driver behind Barings failure, others almost certainly knew what he was doing. He was the scapegoat. I used to work in the building directly behind Barings and remember press everywhere when it collapsed. I was talking to my old boss at the time, and he said if Barings had asked for a £10m increase in their line with who I worked for at the time the day before it failed he'd have signed it off.
This is exactly it, Barings were all too happy to be wilfully ignorant when his rogue trades made them 10% of their profit in a year. They shouldn't have been surprised when it eventually swung back against them
According to ColdFusion’s documentary, Barings’ execs were very inept. They were way too trusting to this guy and the fiasco exposed other problems they were having with not adapting to modern markets and shit.
For those people who commented about the fact that others overlooked this account or didn’t bring it up, in the later stages of the Baring Bank, the company culture was really messed up. Landing a job in the bank was deemed as a golden placement and it meant that you were supposed to be extra smart. Because of this, the culture in the bank became such that if anyone asked a question , irrespective of it’s significance or relevance, that person was ridiculed and looked down upon, even though others in the team might have the same question. It went so far that ( and this is an example) even asking for where the stapler is, was replied with condescension. The person should’ve known where the stapler was. So imagine if nick had spoken out about the 20,000 pound mistake, or if anyone else had spoken out about a ballooning account. ‘How could that person not know?’ Would’ve been the reply and would be left at that. You can read about it in the book: Start With Why.
So when I found a screw up at my workplace for over $100,000 I reported it to my boss and we worked out how to fix it. Nobody goes bankrupt and I didn't get fired. That's got to be a better idea than trying to hide it like nick did.
I once had a job where I recommended an engineer for our company. My boss felt that the engineer made a mistake that cost our company an unnecessary extra $30. (yes, thirty dollars) My boss yelled at me and rubbed my face in that for TWO YEARS. It would've gone on longer but I quit after two years. That's right, a $30 mistake... that someone else made, but I recommended the guy.
Especially when nick made up 10% of their earnings every year, and the mistake was only $20,000 and (supposedly) made by one of nick's employees and not even nick himself
Fun fact: the bank was eventually sold to ING, who themselves almost went bankrupt at the start of the financial crisis due to financial mismanagement, and had to be bailed out by the Dutch government.
He’s such a complete hypocrite, too. He’s said in interviews that his superiors were complete idiots for not noticing, as if the whole reason he caused this mess wasn’t that he was so epically bad as a trader Edit: yall I’m not saying he’s a moron, I’m saying he took crazy risks that aren’t at all sustainable in the long run, and even though no one could predict an earthquake his tactics were bound to fail. If you win the lottery, the way to earn more isn’t to spend until you’re in the red and then try to win it again.
Yeah, he was a crap (or at least unlucky and panicky) trader, but there was also a hell of a lot of negligence and disorganization that allowed his BS to go on unnoticed.
I mean he really does have something of a point there, his superiors clearly didn’t understand what was going on well enough and didn’t have processes in place to confirm what they were being told by him.
A crap AND completely crooked trader. It’s amazing one can be such a greedy douche, fail so spectacularly, screw up millions of people and still feel entitled to open his mouth and brag around his crimes.
He wasn't a bad trader otherwise he wouldn't have had access to important accounts and money. He made a mistake and then did a stupid thing to hide it. Then he got stressed and due to stress (I mean A LOT OF STRESS) he started to make worse and worse decisions. It is spectacularly beautiful and shows what some stress can do
He was certainly not a bad trader. This video skips many parts, including the time he actually managed to remove the massive debt created by speculative investments. It just didnt go well the second time.
Geeze with the resources he had available he could have played it safe and paid back the account slowly but instead he just kept taking bigger and bigger risks.
Exactly lmao. The FTSE100 went up by over 15% that year so if he had literally just put £130k in a diversified account, he'd have made the money back in a year with virtually zero risk.
The video doesn't cover the fact that he successfully traded his way out of his problem - but because he'd got away with it and he knew Barings' controls were lax, he couldn't stop himself continuing to take unwise risks. And that's when he dug himself the same hole again, but this time couldn't stop digging.
@@onesteeltank Yeah and apparently X P feels as though spamming the same comment in every reply section is somehow a good use of their time. Either desperate for likes or just a goofball
@@hypnotoad28 I couldn't give a fuck less about likes on my comment, it's an important point to make because that is literally our entire "justice" system in a nutshell, the rich get away with whatever they want while the poor gets murdered and enslaved in private prison factories for much smaller crimes
Something you didn’t mention in this video was that Leeson actually briefly paid back the money in full in July 1993. He could have just walked away at that point, everything would have been fine, and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, the experience of getting away with it seems to have fed into some sort of sociopathic Napoleon complex, and within days he started doing more illegal trades because he decided he was so talented he could keep cheating the system to earn more money, which went about as well as you’d expect it to
Even the worst companies are composed of employees, who each are likely aware of the problem, at least in a vague way, and have the potential to improve the situation.
In Korea when you lose a bunch of company money you risk your life in a game of life or death -the total winning sum of which won't even cover all you've lost. In England when you lose a bunch of company money you leave a post it note, participate in a game to make yourself money, and get an episode of HAI written about your deeds.
I'm not sure if that is commentary on the extreme conditions in companies when it comes to mistakes in Korea, which really are shite, or if you are referencing something.
The description how he was hiding his error account and all the funny excuses he made up at that time and the fact that no one ever checked what was going on would have added to the story. With this super short summary, it became only @Half as Interesting.
AND the fact that he actually successfully traded his way out of the problem and made the bank a big profit into the bargain - but then couldn't stop himself digging another hole because he'd got away with it the first time.
You were selling $100 of drugs? Say bye to two decades of your life. You destroyed a company, cost them $1,400,000,000, and lost hundreds of people their jobs? You knucklehead, lil slap on the wrist for you sir, quit messin around!
@Malachai Carter it is compared to 20 for much smaller scale drug offences that hurt a hell of a lot less people. White collar crime is notoriously underprosecuted and it's bullshit. 6 years for a 1.4 billion fraud or 20 for selling $500 worth of pot
So how do you manage to destroy 800 million dollars of other people's money and then only go to jail for 4 years. But if you steal a TV anywhere but California you're getting 10. Seriously you steal someone's car, Just GTA not even a carjacking and you're talking a decade. I'm both shocked and appalled to Singaporeans didn't beat this dude to death with a cane on live television for weeks on end.
My father spent the 1970s, 80’s and into the 90’s trading futures and commodities in Chicago. I always tried to understand what he did - he just seemed to ‘get it’ and I couldn’t see it at all. I clearly needed a sub sandwich reference to better get it! Ha! My father finally sold his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade and went to work for my mother at her local business. I could tell he liked not having the stress of the trading floor and he stuck to just online trading going forward. I just can’t imagine losing a client’s money, let alone your company’s money or your own. It seems so stressful!
That's pretty cool. How did he find the adjustment from floor trading to electronic? There was a documentary about CBOT/CBOE floor traders who consistently made money until trading went electronic. A lot of those guys made money on the floor because they could read people, but when everyone went behind a screen, that advantage was gone.
@randomguy8196 Floor trading is shouting and hand signals to communicate bids and offers with each other, but there is a lot of information simply from who is making what trades. If a floor trader for a broker is making trades, those are for clients and that can tell you a lot about which way the market will move. Or if a trader who runs a hedge fund is making certain trades, you can make a pretty decent guess on how he's trying to change his positions. Body language also is a big source of information. All of that is gone with electronic trading, and many floor traders couldn't adapt. Check out the documentary Floored.
The funny (or sad) part of this story is that instead of being sorry or even admitting his mistake, Leeson kept saying that it was the bank's own fault that they were a bunch of numpties and believed him, instead of checking where the money went. That's some first-rate hutzpah, but he is probably right.
@@raptorfromthe6ix833 Who says they did? Financial firms intentionally hire people who are willing to take risks, and for a leadership or high-ranking position, you need someone who will take ownership of a bad situation. This is an example where the good reasons that they hired and trusted him were (eventually) corrupted because of crises situation that broke him and unlocked a character flaw. This is literally a villain's origin story. Every trait that you could hire for has positive and negative aspects, just like every coin has heads and tails. Beside that, every single one of us is in danger of becoming corrupt, if someone makes us very angry, or if we get desperate.
Yes, and by doing so it paid Napoleon’s France, which then used the money to go to war with the UK and nearly invade it. So amazingly bad financial trades seem to have been Barings’ specialty, then.
The bank was sold to ign for 1 pound. Thats not so bad when you realize that this is around 100 times the price of us supercarriers when sold to scrapping companies.
0:36 The man with the funny hat (damn you, TH-cam filter) had nothing to do with the dissolution of Prussia. Prussia was dissolved in 1918, long before he came to power.
TIme-traveling back to visit an elderly Sir Francis Barings in a crowded Regency ballroom, where I'll pull out my phone, show him this video, including the complete Brilliant ad, and then leave without comment.
Fun fact, Nick Leeson managed to weasel his way into becoming chairman of my local club after his effective exile from England, and bankrupted us as well. True story
Love the vid, but one thing: The option contract is NOT for a set price AT a set time; Rather, it is for the set price (strike price) UNTIL the set date [expiration date (which is often the third Saturday of the month)]. But, like I said, I love the topic. Great video, brother!
The video missed out a lot. That £20K loss ballooned, but he was able to successfully make it all back and earn the bank a fat profit into the bargain. Unfortunately, that only emboldened him to keep taking risks, and THAT'S when he started making the losses that led to the bank's collapse.
I'm glad that singapore not only saw the fall of the British to Japan, but also the fall of the oldest British banks to the literal falling of buildings in Japan.
This reminders me of the story of Brian Molony. He was a compulsive gambler who worked for CIBC in Canada. He ended up embezzling millions to feed his gambling habit.
Kinda crazy how you can lose 1.4 billion dollars and only get 4 years in jail then write a book about it to make millions, makes me wonder why more people havent done this
Petition for HAI to introduce any year of time period followed by "It was a good year for greasy white guys" since almost every time period has been pretty good for greasy white guys
Reminds me of a French film called "the Outsider" based on an IRL BNP Paribas guy. During the 2008 crisis, he went opposite marking trends hoping he could outsmart everyone and that his gamble would pay off. Dude was a competent trader, but had no idea how much luck-based his previous wins were and how much he was risking by keeping playing a game where the best move was to cut losses and go report the situation to the higher ups. The tl;dr is, BNP survived the hundreds of millions loss, but sued the trader for all of it though part of the responsibility was allegedly theirs, as he wasn't a completely independent trader and had to follow certain orders.
@@anchiit not really much to say about him, all they really tell me when I push them about him is hes an idiot but they didnt realise how much of an idiot he was
0:38 Bismarck and a few others were reponsible for the conversion of the Kingdom of Prussia to the German Empire, not Hitler lol. Prussia as a whole was abolished by the Allies after WW2
Prussia continued to exist as a subunit of the German Empire, later the Weimar Republic, then Nazi Germany. Had Germany not been dismantled after the war, Prussia would still exist, and the reason that war was fought the way it was, was ultimately Hitler.
This is quite honestly one of the most hilariously amazing stories I’ve heard in my entire life XD I mean, holy shit, this is fucking crazy in all the best ways possible lol
And 16 years later the remaining major banks drove the US economy into the ground to the tune of an estimated $12.8 trillion. Also Made 23.1 million Americans, or 15% of the public unemployed Cost 9.3 million Americans their health insurance. And 11 million homeowners, almost 1 in 4, were saddled with mortgages higher than the value of their homes. No one went to prison, the failing banks were bailed out with public money (whilst their CEO's continued to draw multi million dollar bonuses) and federal oversight and regulation remained unchanged. Is'nt capitalism great?
It's people trust to loan and store all of their live savings on stranger facility.. i never put all of my assets there. Just 30%. Some went jobless and become poor? So what have bank to do with it? More like it pointing toward usual incompetent government there..
This wasn’t just the work of one man. Plenty of others - accountants, auditors, senior managers - contributed to the failure of the bank by not doing their own jobs properly.
Great video as always! I am somewhat disappointed that I am forced to watch it on TH-cam because Nebula is not connecting. I really would rather watch your content there so could you see if they might be able to get their servers working better? I love you and Nebula! I'd dislike TH-cam if I could but they removed the button.
@@FRIEDYOGURT-s4c You may want to actually read people's comments before replying to them. Clearly it's hard for you, but give that reading thing one more try and then reply appropriately.
I remember reading "Around the world in 80 days" as a kid. I was surprised by the fact I learned from a footnote left by the translator saying that Barings bank had survived hundreds of years and is still in the business. Little did I know, the book was a hand-me-down from my youngest uncle and was quite outdated.
ORORORORO!!! I spend half of my day sleeping! ORORORO!!! Then I sometimes get up and tell you that I am a famous content creatorORORORORO!!! Please don't sleep while driving, dear tom
@@AxxLAfriku ?
@@AxxLAfriku English isn’t my mother tongue, I don’t know how to respond to this nor do I comprehend it.
@@thomasaquinas354 As someone who has spoken English all his life, I assure you I too feel the same way. I feel so confused.
@@thomasaquinas354 oh don’t worry, it’s just a schizophrenic attention seeking troll who uses bots to spam gibberish
As an accountant, it blows my mind that no one anywhere along the way saw this ballooning account on the trial balance and asked, "What the heck is that?"
Yeah a £20k account I can imagine being easily overlooked, even a £2mil one. But once you go into the hundreds of millions of pounds, it’s insane nobody even asked what it is
It's almost as if there are perverse incentives to look the other way.
@@johnkeefer8760 Exactly. The early stages, if the bank doesn't break down their financial analysis by entity, country, etc I can understand why it was overlooked. Even then though, less common accounts (like error accounts) are noticed/questioned even sooner. Also if the track percent change, this would have had a flag on it so fast.
@@mattb154 I suppose that's a fair point. Whenever something undesirable is found, the question always seems to be, "Why did you spot this sooner?" So if someone is scared, they might not mention it and hope it resolved itself. Very bad idea.
@@Sandeee do you have a link?
Ah yes, the classic technique of tanking your entire bank to not deal with a loss equivalent to a millionth of the bank's profit LOL
He was probably trying to avoid losing a bet, and having to pay for a co-worker's lunch.
I'm still laughing at how the 1.4 billion loss derives from a 20000£ loss
😳🤣
@@aspenin it's normal he was trying to make money with little money. Just like we regular folks have to do it. The reason he was successful with the bank before this happened is because he had to do it with lots of money. It is easy to make money with lots of money, but it is very easy to lose tons of money with little money.
@@ichigokurosaki7762 it’s not normal to go from 20k loss to 1.4 billion loss, and either way your point of him trying to make money with little money has no validity if that was the reason he failed then they must not of had hardly any money to begin with, at the beginning it was only a 20k loss leaving them with tons of money to make 20k back which should have been easy according to your logic
Imagine the panic when you keep losing money, so you try to make it back but then you double the losses of your bank :/
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
@@xp7575
stop spamming this in every reply
@@shottytheshotgun sorry snowflake, truth hurts
@@xp7575
ok boomer
It should be called: Casino Syndrome
Now do the prequel and tell the story about the man who nearly did that 70 years earlier to the same bank.
damn
Didn’t see that coming .
Prequel*
Same for sequel.
@Stella Hoenheim their meth-addict-in-chief has never been considered stylish by anyone, though
One has to take into consideration that Nick got into his position by actually bringing in a lot of revenue and profit, he didn't fumble into the position, he actually earned it. Then failed spectacularly.
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
Barings just kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, they had an completely incompetent auditing process that let his fraud fly under the radar for years. It was insane.
@@xp7575 that’s deep bro, we live in a society
@@xp7575 You mean George Floyd? Why are you bringing that shit in here?
@@MrNight-dg1ug cause this is literally our whole entire "justice" system in a nutshell and it's DISGUSTING how the rich are allowed to do whatever they want while the poor are murdered and enslaved in private prison factories for far less substantial crimes
What's hilarious is he was probably getting paid millions as a top-level trading manager so the original $20,000 mistake he was trying to cover up was not even a week's worth of his salary
He was probably trying to avoid losing a bet, and having to pay for a co-worker's lunch.
@@jpaugh64 So the money all evens out.
His actual salary was only around £50,000 before bonuses which themselves often amounted to 3/4 times his base salary worth. He currently lives not too far away from me in Galway, Ireland and he previously owned the local football club Galway United. The reality is that in a career in finance, the satisfaction and purpose is derived from making the money, not necessarily personally receiving it. Obviously lived lived a lavish lifestyle for a short time but he didn't see the slightest fraction of what he made.
@@ronanmurphy9426 I hope hes thrown as a person, looks like he has some room
He also made succesful trades that made all of his debts back. He just liked the thrill of it.
Whilst it's evident Leeson was the driver behind Barings failure, others almost certainly knew what he was doing. He was the scapegoat. I used to work in the building directly behind Barings and remember press everywhere when it collapsed. I was talking to my old boss at the time, and he said if Barings had asked for a £10m increase in their line with who I worked for at the time the day before it failed he'd have signed it off.
This is exactly it, Barings were all too happy to be wilfully ignorant when his rogue trades made them 10% of their profit in a year. They shouldn't have been surprised when it eventually swung back against them
I guess, if he's going to be a scapegoat, at least he got celebrity out of it.
this shows how 'good' the financial experts in a bark are....
According to ColdFusion’s documentary, Barings’ execs were very inept. They were way too trusting to this guy and the fiasco exposed other problems they were having with not adapting to modern markets and shit.
For those people who commented about the fact that others overlooked this account or didn’t bring it up, in the later stages of the Baring Bank, the company culture was really messed up. Landing a job in the bank was deemed as a golden placement and it meant that you were supposed to be extra smart. Because of this, the culture in the bank became such that if anyone asked a question , irrespective of it’s significance or relevance, that person was ridiculed and looked down upon, even though others in the team might have the same question.
It went so far that ( and this is an example) even asking for where the stapler is, was replied with condescension. The person should’ve known where the stapler was.
So imagine if nick had spoken out about the 20,000 pound mistake, or if anyone else had spoken out about a ballooning account. ‘How could that person not know?’ Would’ve been the reply and would be left at that.
You can read about it in the book: Start With Why.
That doesn't explain why public regulators and auditors didnt identity it
"...but consider that you, the viewer, has no idea what selling a future even means."
Joke's on you, I watched your video about onion futures!
Destroying the oldest financial institution in England seems so easy!
Barely an inconvenience!
This feels to me, an idiot, who knows nothing: like a fundamental flaw in the entire global financial system
I mean look how easily it happened again in 2008!
Let's do it again now just for fun!
Given how little value there is in the Pound nowadays, I think somebody already did... 🙃
So when I found a screw up at my workplace for over $100,000 I reported it to my boss and we worked out how to fix it. Nobody goes bankrupt and I didn't get fired. That's got to be a better idea than trying to hide it like nick did.
I sorta kinda understand Nick, I have seen people canned for $700...for a corporation worth $300,000,000+ at the time.
I once had a job where I recommended an engineer for our company. My boss felt that the engineer made a mistake that cost our company an unnecessary extra $30. (yes, thirty dollars) My boss yelled at me and rubbed my face in that for TWO YEARS. It would've gone on longer but I quit after two years. That's right, a $30 mistake... that someone else made, but I recommended the guy.
You see? So because you and your boss behaved like adults, you missed a chance for global fame and book deal.
Especially when nick made up 10% of their earnings every year, and the mistake was only $20,000 and (supposedly) made by one of nick's employees and not even nick himself
Fun fact: the bank was eventually sold to ING, who themselves almost went bankrupt at the start of the financial crisis due to financial mismanagement, and had to be bailed out by the Dutch government.
The truth is that most investment banks suffered from a serious lack of regulatory oversight (internal and external) by the 1990s and the 2000s
He’s such a complete hypocrite, too. He’s said in interviews that his superiors were complete idiots for not noticing, as if the whole reason he caused this mess wasn’t that he was so epically bad as a trader
Edit: yall I’m not saying he’s a moron, I’m saying he took crazy risks that aren’t at all sustainable in the long run, and even though no one could predict an earthquake his tactics were bound to fail. If you win the lottery, the way to earn more isn’t to spend until you’re in the red and then try to win it again.
Yeah, he was a crap (or at least unlucky and panicky) trader, but there was also a hell of a lot of negligence and disorganization that allowed his BS to go on unnoticed.
I mean he really does have something of a point there, his superiors clearly didn’t understand what was going on well enough and didn’t have processes in place to confirm what they were being told by him.
A crap AND completely crooked trader. It’s amazing one can be such a greedy douche, fail so spectacularly, screw up millions of people and still feel entitled to open his mouth and brag around his crimes.
He wasn't a bad trader otherwise he wouldn't have had access to important accounts and money. He made a mistake and then did a stupid thing to hide it. Then he got stressed and due to stress (I mean A LOT OF STRESS) he started to make worse and worse decisions. It is spectacularly beautiful and shows what some stress can do
He was certainly not a bad trader. This video skips many parts, including the time he actually managed to remove the massive debt created by speculative investments. It just didnt go well the second time.
Geeze with the resources he had available he could have played it safe and paid back the account slowly but instead he just kept taking bigger and bigger risks.
Exactly lmao. The FTSE100 went up by over 15% that year so if he had literally just put £130k in a diversified account, he'd have made the money back in a year with virtually zero risk.
The video doesn't cover the fact that he successfully traded his way out of his problem - but because he'd got away with it and he knew Barings' controls were lax, he couldn't stop himself continuing to take unwise risks. And that's when he dug himself the same hole again, but this time couldn't stop digging.
Great financial explanation in terms everyone can understand!
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
@@xp7575 you're really comparing these two?
@@onesteeltank Yeah and apparently X P feels as though spamming the same comment in every reply section is somehow a good use of their time. Either desperate for likes or just a goofball
@@onesteeltank how can one not compare them?
@@hypnotoad28 I couldn't give a fuck less about likes on my comment, it's an important point to make because that is literally our entire "justice" system in a nutshell, the rich get away with whatever they want while the poor gets murdered and enslaved in private prison factories for much smaller crimes
Something you didn’t mention in this video was that Leeson actually briefly paid back the money in full in July 1993. He could have just walked away at that point, everything would have been fine, and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, the experience of getting away with it seems to have fed into some sort of sociopathic Napoleon complex, and within days he started doing more illegal trades because he decided he was so talented he could keep cheating the system to earn more money, which went about as well as you’d expect it to
Badly audited banks or companies deserve to go to the wall although it's usually the poor employees that suffer the most.
Even the worst companies are composed of employees, who each are likely aware of the problem, at least in a vague way, and have the potential to improve the situation.
banks are important to society and lets face people who run it rarely go to jail unless its againt other rich people
And the taxpayers a lá 2008
Plot Twist- He wasnt a bad options trader, he just really hated the bank.
He was secretly planted by an enemy banking firm to take down the company from the inside.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 wouldn't surprise me, tbh
As far as I know, he didn't hate the bank, but he did want to exploit it for personal gain.
@@InventorZahran Given that's what he was doing, I suppose so.
In Korea when you lose a bunch of company money you risk your life in a game of life or death -the total winning sum of which won't even cover all you've lost.
In England when you lose a bunch of company money you leave a post it note, participate in a game to make yourself money, and get an episode of HAI written about your deeds.
mugunghwa kkochi piotsseumnida~
I'm not sure if that is commentary on the extreme conditions in companies when it comes to mistakes in Korea, which really are shite, or if you are referencing something.
@@NotChicoAndPico Squidgame reference.
@@kurtlindner Ah, so that's what that series was about, thanks.
The description how he was hiding his error account and all the funny excuses he made up at that time and the fact that no one ever checked what was going on would have added to the story. With this super short summary, it became only @Half as Interesting.
Watch the ColdFusion version of it.
AND the fact that he actually successfully traded his way out of the problem and made the bank a big profit into the bargain - but then couldn't stop himself digging another hole because he'd got away with it the first time.
"There's absolutely no way this could go tits up"
*Turns on tv the next morning*
"GUH"
Lmao
Billionaires when their GME short selling positions get crushed because of a horde of redditors
I love watching the videos of Leeson on the trading floor after the earthquake but before he got caught. You can tell he knows he’s screwed.
Anarchist: "DESTROY THE BANK!!!!"
Leeson: "okay."
Need to look at the Lessons to be learnt from this bankruptcy
This whole thing is just a tale of incredible hubris that even the ancient Greeks would have thought was a bit too much.
nice profile pic
@@prototypeinheritance515 Thanks!
Honestly 6 and a half years is a light sentence for losing a billion dollars
You were selling $100 of drugs? Say bye to two decades of your life. You destroyed a company, cost them $1,400,000,000, and lost hundreds of people their jobs? You knucklehead, lil slap on the wrist for you sir, quit messin around!
@Malachai Carter it is , i expected life for that much money
@Malachai Carter it is compared to 20 for much smaller scale drug offences that hurt a hell of a lot less people. White collar crime is notoriously underprosecuted and it's bullshit. 6 years for a 1.4 billion fraud or 20 for selling $500 worth of pot
If only I knew this when my friend had -1B and Leeson'd it into -14.6T
(JOKE)
if you have a debt of 20,000 dollars it's your issue, if you have a debt of over 1 billion dollars it's the banks issue :)
I also broke my bank at the tender age of 6. It was rather pig-like
That was the oldest bank in the bedroom!
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 and in all of Bedfordshire!
And I bet you just used your charm to get others to put their money in your piggy bank! Fiend!
I broke something belonging to a multi-billion dollar company.
ITS CALLED A COKE CAN YOU… TOYOTA COROLA!
The expressions "know when to cut your losses" and "don't throw good money after bad" come to mind 🤦♂️
So how do you manage to destroy 800 million dollars of other people's money and then only go to jail for 4 years. But if you steal a TV anywhere but California you're getting 10. Seriously you steal someone's car, Just GTA not even a carjacking and you're talking a decade. I'm both shocked and appalled to Singaporeans didn't beat this dude to death with a cane on live television for weeks on end.
Pounds, not dollars. That's 1.4 billion dollars.
Everyone knows white collar crime isn’t real crime.
Because jail is about class warfare, not justice
10 years for a stolen TV? No wonder American incarceration rates are so damn high.
He didn't destroy $1.4 billion. He just moved it from the accounts of his bank's clients to the accounts of other unaffiliated traders.
That explanation of puts, calls, and short straddles was so clarifying I almost understood. Thank goodness I knew not to try to go into finance.
This was not the first time Barings lost all its money, it also did in 1890 but that time the Bank of England organized a bailout.
If Nick Leeson had never been born, it would have instead lost all its money in 2008 and also gotten bailed out by the Bank of England.
This dude would have had a bright career as a finance minister in Greece.
And after the default of that government he could have fled to Venezuela and still continued his career
I heard this story on ColdFusion. It's cool to see more channels covering this crazy banker's exploits!
My father spent the 1970s, 80’s and into the 90’s trading futures and commodities in Chicago. I always tried to understand what he did - he just seemed to ‘get it’ and I couldn’t see it at all. I clearly needed a sub sandwich reference to better get it! Ha! My father finally sold his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade and went to work for my mother at her local business. I could tell he liked not having the stress of the trading floor and he stuck to just online trading going forward. I just can’t imagine losing a client’s money, let alone your company’s money or your own. It seems so stressful!
That's pretty cool. How did he find the adjustment from floor trading to electronic? There was a documentary about CBOT/CBOE floor traders who consistently made money until trading went electronic. A lot of those guys made money on the floor because they could read people, but when everyone went behind a screen, that advantage was gone.
@randomguy8196 Floor trading is shouting and hand signals to communicate bids and offers with each other, but there is a lot of information simply from who is making what trades. If a floor trader for a broker is making trades, those are for clients and that can tell you a lot about which way the market will move. Or if a trader who runs a hedge fund is making certain trades, you can make a pretty decent guess on how he's trying to change his positions. Body language also is a big source of information. All of that is gone with electronic trading, and many floor traders couldn't adapt.
Check out the documentary Floored.
The funny (or sad) part of this story is that instead of being sorry or even admitting his mistake, Leeson kept saying that it was the bank's own fault that they were a bunch of numpties and believed him, instead of checking where the money went. That's some first-rate hutzpah, but he is probably right.
Fun fact: he was listed as one of Singapore's most infamous criminals because he was arrested in Singapore for his deeds in the country
Hollywood: "damn, this dude deserves a movie"
Sam: "eh, not even interesting enough for a main channel video; too much fraud, not enough logistics"
I wanna know how he lost many millions over _years_ without, like, auditors catching on.
Sounds like he was a trusted stakeholder within the bank, and auditors trusted the info he gave them.
@@jpaugh64 thats the sad part in finances and business you should not trust people at first sight
@@raptorfromthe6ix833 Who says they did? Financial firms intentionally hire people who are willing to take risks, and for a leadership or high-ranking position, you need someone who will take ownership of a bad situation. This is an example where the good reasons that they hired and trusted him were (eventually) corrupted because of crises situation that broke him and unlocked a character flaw. This is literally a villain's origin story.
Every trait that you could hire for has positive and negative aspects, just like every coin has heads and tails. Beside that, every single one of us is in danger of becoming corrupt, if someone makes us very angry, or if we get desperate.
Barings was so ancient and big that it was one of the institutions that helped finance the Louisiana Purchase in 1803!
Yes, and by doing so it paid Napoleon’s France, which then used the money to go to war with the UK and nearly invade it. So amazingly bad financial trades seem to have been Barings’ specialty, then.
The bank was sold to ign for 1 pound. Thats not so bad when you realize that this is around 100 times the price of us supercarriers when sold to scrapping companies.
ign the gaming company oh my
Not sure what the co-relation is there.
@@livinginvancouverbc2247 It's just a joke I came up with.
0:36 The man with the funny hat (damn you, TH-cam filter) had nothing to do with the dissolution of Prussia. Prussia was dissolved in 1918, long before he came to power.
What's crazy is that there was one time where he actually did make the money back and fixed everything, but instead of calling it quits he kept going.
As an old subscriber of your content, I am loving this type of editing and script/joke writing
bro called us out with that futures line 💀
its crazy that if you steal 1.4 billion dollars you get 4 years, but I kill one orphan and I get 20.
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
TIme-traveling back to visit an elderly Sir Francis Barings in a crowded Regency ballroom, where I'll pull out my phone, show him this video, including the complete Brilliant ad, and then leave without comment.
4 years for a billion dollars seems like an excellent deal
Leeson's trades went from Stonks to Stinks very quickly!
Close to 2mil! You Deserve it man, Can’t wait.
Fun fact, Nick Leeson managed to weasel his way into becoming chairman of my local club after his effective exile from England, and bankrupted us as well. True story
And according to Wikipedia, he's now the CEO of bear and Bull. Some financial Form. Lol
Galway United?
Love the vid, but one thing:
The option contract is NOT for a set price AT a set time; Rather, it is for the set price (strike price) UNTIL the set date [expiration date (which is often the third Saturday of the month)].
But, like I said, I love the topic.
Great video, brother!
That's an american option. european options can only be exercised at the expiry date.
finally a call and put explanation i can understand
So to cover a £20,000 loss, you lose £800 million. Sounds brilliant 😂
The video missed out a lot. That £20K loss ballooned, but he was able to successfully make it all back and earn the bank a fat profit into the bargain. Unfortunately, that only emboldened him to keep taking risks, and THAT'S when he started making the losses that led to the bank's collapse.
Still it sounds like "my car was stolen, let's take out a loan but instead of buying a new car I'll go to Vegas!"
I'm glad that singapore not only saw the fall of the British to Japan, but also the fall of the oldest British banks to the literal falling of buildings in Japan.
00:06 Bloody upside-down.
This reminders me of the story of Brian Molony. He was a compulsive gambler who worked for CIBC in Canada. He ended up embezzling millions to feed his gambling habit.
Kinda crazy how you can lose 1.4 billion dollars and only get 4 years in jail then write a book about it to make millions, makes me wonder why more people havent done this
Most banks aren't quite as incompetent.
Most of us don't know how. Thanks HAI for taking care of that problem! Off to get a job in finance, then to Maui! 🏖️
Petition for HAI to introduce any year of time period followed by "It was a good year for greasy white guys" since almost every time period has been pretty good for greasy white guys
Love your videos, so interesting you should rename your channel as whole as interesting or always as intersecting or always interesting or something
i feel like u explained calls and puts in the most confusing way possible LOL
how tf does over a billion in loses amount to just 6 years. thats insane.
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
@@xp7575 he even got out earlier for good behavior like so what he should be behaving its the bare minimum
1:23
me who watched the onion video 2 times : I don't have such weaknesses
Not often do I cheer for the bank instead of the employee.
I really like your transitions to the ads. Its super smooth. As smooth as the transitions from Linus Tech Tips used to be.
Only 4 years in prison? Should’ve been longer. If anyone can just go to prison for 4 years and make £800 million, sure they’d all be doing it.
He didn't make 800 millions, he lost them, that money belonged to the bank.
@0:42 We're in The Snack Zone baybeeeeeee!
Hey, I know what selling a future is! I saw the "How Global Oil Prices Were Raised $1.50 by a Drunk Trader" video
Reminds me of a French film called "the Outsider" based on an IRL BNP Paribas guy. During the 2008 crisis, he went opposite marking trends hoping he could outsmart everyone and that his gamble would pay off. Dude was a competent trader, but had no idea how much luck-based his previous wins were and how much he was risking by keeping playing a game where the best move was to cut losses and go report the situation to the higher ups. The tl;dr is, BNP survived the hundreds of millions loss, but sued the trader for all of it though part of the responsibility was allegedly theirs, as he wasn't a completely independent trader and had to follow certain orders.
Didn’t expect to see a video on it considering my actually grandparents knew him, noice
Story time?
@@anchiit not really much to say about him, all they really tell me when I push them about him is hes an idiot but they didnt realise how much of an idiot he was
your channel is like those annoying top 10 channels but you are not annoying and actually have interesting videos and funny jokes
I didn't understand any of that. All those sandwiches made me think of my upcomming lunch time
Simply put, a call is a bet that the price will go up, a a put is a bet the price will go down, a straddle is a bet the price will stay the same.
@@boygenius538_8 Legend says.. he is still thinking about sandwiches..
The best explanation of a call option I have ever seen!
I'm guessing Sir Francis is rolling in his grave cause of this dude
George definitely is...
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
@@xp7575 wasn't an execution because what chauvin did was illegal
@@kets4443murder, execution, same thing
Not mentioned was the fact that he thought everyone else was just an idiot and he didnt think he did anything wrong in this whole thing.
0:38 Bismarck and a few others were reponsible for the conversion of the Kingdom of Prussia to the German Empire, not Hitler lol. Prussia as a whole was abolished by the Allies after WW2
Prussia continued to exist as a subunit of the German Empire, later the Weimar Republic, then Nazi Germany. Had Germany not been dismantled after the war, Prussia would still exist, and the reason that war was fought the way it was, was ultimately Hitler.
WallStreetBets should declare him as their mascot
This is quite honestly one of the most hilariously amazing stories I’ve heard in my entire life XD
I mean, holy shit, this is fucking crazy in all the best ways possible lol
"I CAN FIX THIS" says man desperately shoveling cash into the furnace
And 16 years later the remaining major banks drove the US economy into the ground to the tune of an estimated $12.8 trillion.
Also
Made 23.1 million Americans, or 15% of the public unemployed
Cost 9.3 million Americans their health insurance.
And 11 million homeowners, almost 1 in 4, were saddled with mortgages higher than the value of their homes.
No one went to prison, the failing banks were bailed out with public money (whilst their CEO's continued to draw multi million dollar bonuses) and federal oversight and regulation remained unchanged.
Is'nt capitalism great?
yea it's pretty great
That’s not capitalism, it’s cronyism and corruption.
It's people trust to loan and store all of their live savings on stranger facility.. i never put all of my assets there. Just 30%. Some went jobless and become poor? So what have bank to do with it? More like it pointing toward usual incompetent government there..
This wasn’t just the work of one man. Plenty of others - accountants, auditors, senior managers - contributed to the failure of the bank by not doing their own jobs properly.
Should make a video regarding a certain thing being disabled.
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
You forgot about the part where he actually made the first 20k back then realized he could cover any losses this way and kept doing it
I actually do have a vague understanding of what selling a future means 😁
The fact they let him create an account worth 20k with no oversight on how he was managing that big of a loss is just baffling.
It's all play money at that level anyway. Create it out of thin air, make it disappear, who cares? Magic!
Great video as always!
I am somewhat disappointed that I am forced to watch it on TH-cam because Nebula is not connecting. I really would rather watch your content there so could you see if they might be able to get their servers working better?
I love you and Nebula! I'd dislike TH-cam if I could but they removed the button.
why would you dislike the video just because you can't watch it on a different website? karen alert
@@FRIEDYOGURT-s4c You may want to actually read people's comments before replying to them.
Clearly it's hard for you, but give that reading thing one more try and then reply appropriately.
@@FRIEDYOGURT-s4c this is why comprehension exams are neccessary
@@TeleTrenta Seems that those exams may be optional in his neck of the woods.
@@nikonfan2407 what do you mean by disliking youtube then, sorry I'm not english
Shouldve put 820 million on red, works every time
I know what a future is I watch your content
The old Martingale betting strategy: keep doubling your betting size. What could go wrong?
Anyone who destroys a bank is a hero. Forever.
I like how the buyer/sellers' faces got more and more distorted
Alliteration ftw!
Oh, I thought for a second that Max Fosh had finally made it to Half as Interesting...
Yeah, about Brilliant and math skills? I don't think having good math skills is *more* likely to bankrupt a bank.
Finally, a video about the kid from Marry Poppins!
He probably would have gotten away with it if he had named the account 88888888.
The Call and Put explanation was nice.
Its amazing how some people are allowed to fail and it's not held against them
People are of course allowed to fail, that's just humanity. It's what one does with the failure that becomes illegal, immoral or destructive.
Imagine how many times this has happened where the trader covered the loss and no one found out
5:16 you’re*
4:21 Okay I've been playing way too much The World Ends With You because I immediately went 'Oh hey it's scramble crossing!'
"economists are rea contributors to society and arent scam artists"
Steal $2 BILLION: get 4 years in prison
Use fake $20 bill: get executed with no trial
Stock traders are not economists. An economist would have more common ground with a philosopher than a stock trader.
"And bank after the work bank" thanks for clearing that up