Nick Leeson comes from a modest background. He lived in Watford in North London,
And was the son of a plasterer and a nurse. He started working after his A-levels to help
Support his three siblings after his mother died of cancer.
The Daily Mirror in the UK quoted his sister: “Nick has worked hard for what he’s got and he deserves it all. He wasn’t one of those public (private) school types which has had it all handed to him on a plate”
SIMEX traders had the impresssion of him as both cocky and friendly and described him as “a real big short who made big deals”
A trader from a Japanese broking him said,”Before this thing happened, we all thought that he was unbeatable. He appeared very brilliant, very confident.”
But although he was in Singapore for more than three years, those who knew him seemed few and far between. Most of the traders that The Straits Times approached for comment couldn’t say much about the man. A trader from a local futures firm told the paper that Leeson did not socialise with the other people on the trading floor.
But there were signs of stress just before the trader fled the country. Time magazine reported in March that,a week before he left, Leeson “kept throwing up in the bathroom at work. Colleagues didn’t know why.”Two months prior to that, the security guard at the apartment building Leeson lived in had also complained about the trader’s computer printer working overnight.
The report also said that Leeson had spoken to an unnamed Barings colleague the day he left Singapore. “He sounded really weird on the phone, like he was in a really good mood. He asked me, How’s life? It was completely out of character”
Leeson was said to have tendered his resignation to Barings via fax. He sent a handwritten note on 24 February – a day after he left Singapore – addressed to Jones and Bax from the Regent Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
In his note, he said that he left because “the pressures, both business and personal, have become too much to bear” He also said that it was “neither my intention nor aim for this to happen” and admitted that the work pressures had “affected my health to the extent that a breakdown is imminent”