Then Leeson started making speculative trades that weren't approved by Barings. He was doing extremely well at first - he earned £10m for Barings in '92; however, Leeson made bad trades as well and lost money. Instead of owning up to the losses, and because Barings made Leeson a part of both the front office and back office in Singapore, Leeson was able to use an "error account" (numbered 88888, which is good luck in Chinese culture) to hide all of his bad trades from Baring management.