new and improved risk-management measures. Today, measures and sys- tems such as Value at Risk and enterprise risk management have grown in popularity due to the lessons learned in the 1990s. Although it is true that ING Bank eventually purchased Barings and none of the depositors or cred- itors was hurt by the collapse, shareholders and loan note holders still suf- fered terribly.20
CONCLUSION: LEESON’S LESSONS
The Barings-Nick Leeson story is a spectacular anomaly that provides some valuable lessons. Effective risk management requires a clear line of demar- cation between the back office (i.e., the individuals responsible for record- ing, confirming, settling, reconciling, and reporting transactions) and the front office (i.e., the traders). Otherwise, there will always be temptation to fix the books to enhance performance. Without this separation, control sys- tems that monitor risks, such as trading limits, credit, liquidity, and cash flows, lose most of their significance. Barings allowed Nick Leeson to settle his own trades, by giving him authority over both the front and back office, and as a result he could manipulate accounts at the Singapore branch, while reporting fraudulent totals that appeared accurate. Giving Leeson au- thority over both functions was equivalent to a farmer giving the fox re- sponsibility for counting the chickens in the chicken coop.
Perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the Barings-Leeson catastrophe was the role played by senior management (i.e., Leeson’s direct supervisors, the bank’s management committee, and the board of directors), whose er- rors were ones of omission rather than commission. Simply put, there was a gaping lack of management control that gave too much autonomy to Leeson, who was, in more ways than one, far beyond the scrutiny of his su- pervisors. The directors in London thought Leeson was arbitraging, when, in reality, he was taking outright positions and selling naked (i.e., un- hedged) puts and calls—both of which were clear violations of Barings’ rules. No one in the bank seems to have fully understood the risks that Leeson was taking, and because he was reporting such large profits, no one posed the hard questions that should have been asked. Leeson’s supervisors should have had direct and immediate knowledge of his activities. Barings management committee should have set up reporting systems to ensure that important information on operational risks reached them, and the
board of directors should have put the management committee under con- stant pressure to formulate these risk reporting systems.
Senior Barings managers ignored internal audit reports, as well as in- quiries from the Bank for International Settlements. They even ignored (for a while) the cold reality of Leeson’s call for cash, when trading losses re- quired Barings London to borrow the needed funds and wire them to Singapore. Barings management thought Leeson was arbitraging, and therefore, it funded his margin calls without demanding full explanations. Arbitrage traders are not supposed to be superstars. They are not supposed to earn enormous profits. Rather, they should be earning small profits on numerous trades with almost zero net exposures. When an arbitrage trader begins to earn 20% to 50% of a multinational bank’s annual profits on riskless trades, as Leeson claimed to be doing, warning bells and sirens should sound immediately.
Had Leeson been fully hedged, then the margin calls on one exchange would have eventually been offset by gains on the other. To be sure, he would have needed to post larger and larger amounts to his margin ac- counts as his positions expanded, but they would have been nowhere near the level of funding he requested.
The truth is that Leeson’s supervisors seemed to bend over backwards looking for reasons to believe that he was staying within the bank’s guide- lines and the eye-popping trading profits he was generating were legitimate. Whatever arguments Leeson’s supervisors concocted, they were invalid and shallow. Barings had rules and regulations in place that were supposed to stop traders (including Leeson) from activities such as carrying open overnight positions, exposing the bank to any one customer for more than 25% of the bank’s capital, and selling options. Almost no twisting and turning can reverse the fact that many levels of management above and around Leeson failed to function properly. It is sobering to think how many individuals with brilliant minds and the opportunity to study at universities like Oxford and Cambridge were duped by a lone rogue trader in Singapore.