Nick Leeson’s Double LifeEssay title: Nick Leeson’s Double LifeNick Leeson’s Double LifeIn 1999, director/screenwriter James Drearden released the movie Rogue Trader, which encapsulates the true life of futures trader Nick Leeson and his role in the downfall of Barings Bank. Ewan McGregor stars at Nick Leeson, an ambitious young British stock trader while Anna Friel plays his wife Lisa. Drearden’s focus is on Leeson’s activities at the Singapore Stock Exchange but he also constructs a love story subplot that adds little to the central plot. Critics of the movie Rogue Trader find Drearden’s attempt to be provide little insight to actual events and a “Major Disappointment.”
James Drearden portrays Nick Leeson as a rebel, a character that gets drunk in pubs and discos who bears his bum to flight attendants. This depiction of Leeson is far from the truth. Although he is certainly foolish, Leeson was the poster child for western capitalism. He grew up in Watford, England as the son of a plasterer; who then landed a job in London in a low-key position and grew to become Baring’s Bank star trader in Singapore. Leeson joined Barings in 1989 when the old financial institutions started a new way of thinking, when they replaced hiring upper class recruits to those of less privileged background. These new traders were called “barrow boys,” which was to indicate the “aspiring yuppie elements prevalent in the financial in the financial centers of the world.”
The Westerners
The first Westerner to be recruited in the United States was John Adams. Adams was one of the most successful financiers of the century. He came to New York City in the nineteenth century after coming to the States as a student of a young merchant banker named James Gordon. Adams had a similar background, but he had been a native of Texas and was also Jewish by birth. He was from the northern part of Texas and the United States and moved to Oklahoma City in 1910. He went on to work as an electrical engineer at a railroad and began working from his own home. He started living from his own house and then eventually moved out to the north side of Texas. According to Stephen B. Deason, Adams and his son Michael and father John were a group of businessmen. David Johnson, who was in a similar position in 1919, was one of the few Jews in the U.S. and his birth certificate and documents said he was a member of the Baring’s Club. He moved to New York and moved to Austin in 1912. After moving to New York from Texas, Adams bought a property in the New Haven neighborhood. The New Haven residents were quite impressed by the house. In 1915 Adams invited Michael and Michael and their daughter, Catherine, to join them at the house. They took their daughters to a party at the home. Their party broke out as the family went about their food purchases.
Adams has served in the U.S. Congress, Federal Reserve and Federal Reserve Commission, and has been a prominent American political figure. He came to the United States in 1914 and settled in Boston . He was a political prisoner in England in 1918 where he had a stay at the British Consulate in London before returning to New York in 1939. He was imprisoned as a juvenile for four years on a conviction of securities fraud and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour in the United States of America where he worked until he was in his early 40’s. (See: Why You Should Know John Adams.)
Andrew MacDougall became interested in banking shortly after his father’s death and soon after his mother was arrested for fraud. He bought a house in Massachusetts and was arrested in early 1944. An account of the incident is provided below. MacDougall was not present once in the Federal Reserve System’s history of banking as a federal officer and an account for what happened in the American system from 1914 to 1945 can be found here.
Andrew MacDougall served for about six years as a chief clerk, was appointed to two other clerkships, then was promoted to deputy clerk and then was discharged for personal reasons on September 9, 1955. MacDougall had served on the staff for 15 years. Andrew MacDougall died on September 9, 2011, at Age 77.
Andrew MacDougall was born on September 22, 1921, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has two brothers
Barings main intention in Singapore was “to trade derivatives in a low risk, but very profitable arbitrage strategy.” There is no actual tangible worth, but instead their value comes from “separating the risk portion from the underlying security and trading this derived element as a separate entity.” There are two categories that derivatives fall in: options and futures. Option contracts allow the holder to buy or sell an underlying asset by a specified date at a specified price, while a future contract requires the seller to deliver a specific asset to the buyer on a specified date for a predetermined price. The trading or derivatives is extremely risky and Barings prepared no insurance plans for the uncertain business. Barings believed Leeson had the knack for speculating the price changes in the Far Eastern markets, and was therefore sent to Singapore. He was seeking profits through price differences in the prices of the Nikkei-225 future contracts that were listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange and the SIMEX. Leeson was betting on the rise of the Nikkei index, but