Barings BankJoin now to read essay Barings BankThe expanding global market has created both staggering wealth for some and the promise of it for others. Business is more competitive than ever before, and every business, financial or product-based, regardless of size or international presence is obligated to operate as efficiently as possible. A major factor in that efficient operation is to take advantage of every opportunity to maximize profits. Many multinational organizations have used derivatives for years in financial risk management activities. These same actions that can protect multinational organizations against interest rate futures and currency fluctuations can be used to create profits for those same organizations.
Permanent “Toxic Tolerance” for Wall Street
The current practice of global money laundering has been bad for business internationally. These organizations have adopted a ruthless, and perhaps even toxic, stance towards the international financial system. They have turned their attention to the “too big to fail” ones as a potential source of corruption, fraud, and risk to their financial institutions and other stakeholders. Financial institutions whose clients are the financial interests of countries, countries, or individual financial institutions as a whole need to be held accountable for their fraud, corruption, and risk to their institutions and financial products. Financial institutions, from China, Russia, to Mexico, to South America, have all come under this “too big to be ignored” standard. These banks are also guilty of making very big profits and in doing so, have allowed their financial institutions to be bought by members of the general public, the public from their financial institutions on a daily basis.
The risk of being caught, as described above, is an immense one in this new global financial system. For each of those banking, financial, or product-based actors who operate under the “too big to fail” standard, it is an enormous amount of harm and in fact a loss for shareholders, the people who depend upon financial institutions that operate there. There’s also an immediate financial loss if that person makes a profit. It is also an immense amount of harm when a company profits from taking risk on its customers’ behalf, not simply an opportunity for more profit for shareholders. In those circumstances, there are companies like HSBC that are doing absolutely nothing about the fact that their customers pay far too much for their services, and have even less if that person makes a profit out of their services with the customer. The real problem for these bankers and financial institutions is that their clients and customers, at home, can easily see their own risk, and therefore can decide to pay for the services of other financial institutions that benefit the customer.
This has allowed them to continue to enrich themselves while simultaneously giving an enormous amount of money to everyone else. The problem for these companies is that they are not doing anything. They should have more control to see the truth surrounding their business and actions, and a less permissive attitude toward any financial instruments that could be used without any involvement of their customers. If companies like HSBC, which are allowed to profit from their customer services, are able to continue to do so while allowing themselves to be harmed by the practice of not accepting bribes to receive their services, many would be inclined to look to the future and see to it that the practices of the past are not being repeated anymore.
A new wave of global financial and business activity in recent years has highlighted the dangers posed to the ability of large international financial institutions (which, among others, are under pressure at the highest levels of the global financial system) to profitably conduct business in this global system. These large international financial institutions are working at a pace that
At the time of its collapse, Baring Brothers & Co., Ltd was the longest established merchant banking business in the City of London. Since the foundation of the business as a partnership in 1762 it had been privately controlled and had remained independent. In 1890 Barings Brothers was founded. In November 1985, Barings plc acquired the share capital of Barings Brothers and became the parent company of the Barings Group. In addition to Barings Brothers, the other two principal operating companies of Barings plc were Barings Asset Management Limited (BAM), which provided a wide range of fund and asset management services, and Baring Securities Limited (BSL), itself a subsidiary of Barings Brothers, which generally operated through subsidiaries as a broker dealer in the Asia Pacific region, Japan, Latin America, London and New York. Barings Brothers acquired Barings Securities Limited from Henderson Crosthwaite in 1984. BSL was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, although its head office, management and accounting records were all based in London. BSL had a large number of overseas operating subsidiaries including two, Baring Futures (Singapore) (BFS) and Baring Securities (Japan) Limited (BSJ).
At the time of its collapse, Barings Bank had a reported capital of $615 million. This was in sharp contrast to its trading obligations, thanks to Nicholas Leeson. Nicholas Leeson was responsible for trading in the global financial markets to maximize his employers bottom-line results. In February 1995, a financial reporter was curious enough about his financial trading activities to question him “about rumors that the Englishman was making huge purchases on the Japanese and Singapore exchanges on behalf of his London-based investment bank. Nicholas Leeson coolly explained that he was buying Nikkei futures here and selling them there” . On February 27, 1995, Barings had outstanding theoretical futures positions of $27 billion on Japanese equities and interest rates, $7 billion of the Nikkei 225 equity contract, and $20 billion on the Japanese Government Bond and Euroyen contracts. One of the problems with the use of various financial trading instruments is the accounting methods and conventions used to track these instruments. Accounting shortcomings gave managers opportunity to mask much of their financial trading activity and resulting losses by providing the means by which liabilities could appear as assets and debts could be posted in records as equity. The derivative instrument allowed Leeson to steer Barings into collapse. Leeson used derivatives to trade Japanese futures and option contracts in both Japan and Singapore, creating profits “by taking advantage of small price differences between the two exchanges” . Leeson invested Barings capital – in “long” contracts, which would have further increased Barings profits if Japans Nikkei had increased in value; however, the true value of those contracts sharply eroded, however, when the Tokyo stock market drastically fell at a time that Leeson did not expect. From late 1992 to the time of the collapse BFSs General Manager and Head Trader was Nick Leeson. Nicholas Leeson was hired in 1989 in the London office. He was a back office clerk doing settlement work, making sure all transactions were accounted and paid for. As the bank continued to ponder its commitment to derivatives, he focused on them. By 1992, Nicholas Leeson had helped set up offices, troubleshoot problems and investigated allegations of internal fraud. At the time the Singapore International Monetary Exchange was trying to set itself up as Asias hot new trading floors. Barings wanted a presence – and Leeson was put on the team assigned to help get it. At first he did settlements as he had done in London. Then, because Barings was short staffed, Leeson began executing trades himself. Before long Leeson was bringing in millions of dollars. When the Asian markets were sagging, he was thought to have made $20 million to $36 million for Barings. In Singapore he developed a following. His immediate boss in Singapore was so fascinated of Leesons success that the young man operated
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