Nicholas “Nick” William Leeson (created 25 February 1967) is a former derivatives agent whose deceptive, unauthorized high risk trading caused the dramatic fall of Barings Bank, the UK’s oldest investment bank, that he was sentenced to penitentiary. In 1992, he was named general manager of a new operation in futures markets to the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX). Barings had held a seat on SIMEX for a while, but failed to activate it until Leeson was sent over. Leeson was sent to Singapore after he was refused a agent’s license in the UK due to fraud on his application. In October 1994, Leeson was arrested in Singapore for an event including mooning. From 1992, Leeson made unauthorized high risk trades that at first made big gains for Barings: 10 million, which accounted for 10% of Barings’ yearly gain. He got a bonus of 130,000 on his wages of 50,000 for that year. Nevertheless, his chance soon went sour and he used one of Barings’ mistake accounts (accounts used to correct errors produced in trading) to conceal his losses. The account was numbered 88888 — 8 being a amount regarded as very fortunate in Chinese numerology. Leeson asserts this account was used to conceal an error made by among his co-workers; rather than purchase 20 contracts as the customer had purchased, she’d sold them, costing Barings 20,000.