Leeson arrived at BSS in 1992 and started hiring local staff. As general manager, Leeson’s job was not trading, but he soon took the necessary exam so that he could trade on SIMEX along with his small team of traders. He was now general manager, head trader and, due to his experience in operations, de facto head of the back office. Such an arrangement should have rung alarm bells, but no one within Barings’ senior management seemed to notice the blatant conflicts. Leeson and his traders had authority to perform two types of trading:
1. transacting futures and options orders for clients or for other firms within the Barings organization, and