The Fall of Barings

All That Glitters

John Gapper is Chief Business Commentator and Associate Editor of the Financial Times. His awards include Business Commentator of the Year at the 2011 Editorial Intelligence Awards and Best Columnist in the 2011 Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards. He was named one of GQ's 100 most influential men in Britain in 2009. He studied at Oxford University and the Wharton School. He is author of How To Be A Rogue Trader (a Penguin Short ebook), as well as a financial novel to be published by Random House US in 2012. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, the novelist Rosie Dastgir, and their two daughters. 
 
Nick Denton is founder of Gawker Media and Managing Editor of Gawker.com. He was previously a writer for the Financial Times.

The definitive, classic account of the fall of the House of Baring and the ultimate rogue trader Nick Leeson. 
 
John Gapper, Associate Editor of the Financial Times, and his co-author Nicholas Denton, now founder of Gawker Media, interviewed all the major players involved in the collapse of one of England's oldest banks. 
 
All That Glitters reveals the faustian deal struck between the whizz-kid traders who seemed to be bringing in huge profits and the grandies who were happy to pocket them without asking too many questions. For the first time, the actions and motives of all the participants are explained, including the final days when politicians and bankers made a last-ditch attempt to save the bank, as well as Nick Leeson's actions and motives.

John Gapper

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is John Gapper's foray into the world of rogue traders. 
 
Unlike most bankers, they are household names: Nick Leeson of Barings, Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale, John Rusnak of Allied Irish Bank. And now the 31 year-old Kweku Adoboli, who allegedly ran up $2.3bn in losses at UBS. These are the men who have bought banks to their knees and global financial systems to a halt. Each time the banks declare themselves to be innocent victims of a fraud. 
 
But why do traders keep on committing apparently senseless crimes, with little benefit apart from higher bonuses and a risk of ending up in prison? And why do banks, which should have learned the tricks of the traders, keep being deceived? 
 
In this Penguin Special, the Financial Times' associate editor John Gapper unlocks the mystery by delving into the evolutionary risk-taking instincts of both humans and animals - from yellow-eyed junco sparrows in Arizona to honey-bees. He reveals how banks encourage their traders to evade risk limits, and shows how the rogue traders merely mimic the strategies used by their firms to seem more profitable than they really are. 
 
A rogue trader is often an outsider who starts in a lowly role and gambles with a bank's money in a bid to become a star. Gapper traces patterns of behaviour and personality that could be used to catch them before disaster strikes. But do the banks really want to? And are the rogue traders just the symptoms of a financial system gone rogue?

John Gapper

Books by John Gapper

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter