Rogue Trader

'Hair-raising' Sunday Times
'Simultaneously entertaining and appalling' Financial Times

Twenty years ago - before Lehman Brothers; before PPI; before a global recession and crises with the Euro - before all that, there was Nick Leeson, the original rogue trader.

When Leeson was arrested in 1995 for bringing Barings Bank to its knees, it initially seemed as if he had single-handedly crushed the company. Indeed, it was he alone who found himself in the dark confines of a Singapore jail, from where he wrote Rogue Trader. Now updated for the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of Barings, this is his story of a broken system; of a cast of characters blind to anything but profits - whatever the cost.

Leeson's tale of boom and bust is an important reminder of the immense power the banking system held and, worryingly, still holds.