ognizing exposures, but equally important, they create opportunities for clever and unscrupulous employees to figure out how to take advantage of the permissive treatment of temporary imbalances. Nick Leeson was certainly both clever and unscrupulous. Barings had strict trading limits and believed that it was diligently monitoring all its traders to make sure they did not exceed their limits, but the bank’s systems were not prepared for the level of fraud and misrepresentation that Leeson committed, and Barings was not aware of the secret passageway Leeson found to its crown jewels. In July 1992, shortly after being assigned to Singapore and only a couple of days after Barings gained membership on SIMEX, Leeson opened an 88888 Account, just like the one he uncovered in Barings’ Indonesia branch.7 By 1993, just a year after his arrival, Leeson began reporting extraordinary profits. From the perspective of Barings London, there was nothing suspect about Leeson setting up the 88888 Account. After all, a separate account for settling transaction discrepancies was normal, but what went on in this account was apparently off the radar screen of Leeson’s managers in London and Singapore. Leeson set himself the goal of becoming the protector of his newly discovered door to fortune and fame. Within a week of opening the 88888 Account, he had its reporting software changed so that transactions in the account did not appear on the daily internal performance reports.8 You may ask, “What well-managed bank would allow its chief trader to be in charge of the back office, as well?” The answer is easier to understand once you realize that, initially, Barings’ Singapore branch was supposed to be executing orders placed exclusively by Barings affiliates worldwide on behalf of their customers. It was some time afterward that BFS also began to conduct independent arbitrage transactions, but from the standpoint of Barings London, this new line of business posed no major security breach. BFS was not supposed to be involved in any trading for the house’s account, so Barings’ management might have reasoned that any loss of control by putting Leeson in charge of the front and back offices was offset by the cost savings of having one person cover two tasks. As competition for customers became keener and profits declined, BFS gradually began to take on positions of its own. Leeson was put in charge of Singapore’s arbitrage activities, which meant he was supposed to have large blocks of offsetting Nikkei 225 futures contracts traded simultaneously on