Talk:Barings Bank/Archives/2015

It's a sub

The current material is OK, but isn't close to being a proper article. This is the bank once known as the Queen's Bank, that financed the British participation in the Napoleonic Wars and U.S. participation in the Industrial Revolution. Needs more than a couple of paragraphs.

One thing I'd really like to know: how did a British bank get away with helping Thomas Jefferson raise $15 million to buy the Louisiana Territories from Napoleon -- at a time when Britain and France were at war???!!! ---Isaac R

It's a small stub

This article does need a lot more material to be useful. Barings also went bankrupt in the 1890. The name was bought from the liquidators by a relative of the Barings and others, and a new bank was established. I have read several books about banking history, so I don't remember where I found that item. The oldest bank in England is Barclay's, which began in 1690.

Losses

Baring's losses were partly caused by an anti-volatility sale of put and call options. The index had been at about 19,000 for a year. It then dropped to 17,000 under the influence of an earth quake. The main losses were made by buying into a falling futures market.

Text descrepency

When reading the text of this article, and that of Nick Leeson I noticed a small descrepency. The text in the article on Nick Leeson reads:

Leeson claims that this account was first used to hide an error made by one of his colleagues; rather than buy 20 contracts as the customer had ordered, she'd sold them, costing Barings £20,000.

While this article reads:

Leeson claims the losses started when one of his colleagues bought contracts when she should have sold them

I assume this refers to the same incident, so which one should it be? Crownsteler 15:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Merged content from Barings Bank collapse

The article on collapse was longer than this one, and yet still too short to warrant a separate page, when both can sensibly be treated in one. So I've merged them. Wikidea 18:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge. The two fit together in a nice tidy package. The Transhumanist 02:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Name

When did Baring Brothers & Co. Ltd. (1890) become Barings PLC (1995)? Sebastian Panwitz (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

When the rot started

You say: According to Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, Leeson began doing [unauthorised speculation] at the end of January 1995. Due to a series of internal and external events, his unhedged losses escalated rapidly.

Nick Leeson's wiki page says: By the end of 1992, the account's losses exceeded £2 million, which ballooned to £208 million by the end of 1994. The beginning of the end occurred on 16 January 1995, when Leeson placed a short straddle in the Singapore and Tokyo stock exchanges...

Can we reconcile these two contradictory statements? Valetude (talk) 16:50, 19 December 2015 (UTC)