Baring His Lessons

But while the movie may be some time coming, Rogue Trader is definitely written in a potential screenplay format, with his dramatic escape from Singapore as a prologue and a flashback which tells his story till his arrest in Frankfurt and subsequent trials. An ode to Gordon Gekko's anthem, "Greed is good," it is full of images and insights that would translate easily to the screen medium. Consider this: "After a weekend with Pete, in which he excelled himself by walking up behind a girl who was sitting down and calmly placing his *** on top of her head, I worked out my month's notice at Morgan Stanley and reported for my first day's work at Barings on Monday, 10 July, 1989."

And describing the hotel in Indonesia he first escaped to, Leeson writes: "They would be brokers, bankers, lawyers, oilmen, and probably traders like me. They were expats, and they liked their beer cold, their chicken satayed, and their women brain-dead and adoring."

Leeson's descent into the 'web of deceit' began in July 1992 when, almost immediately after Barings Futures Singapore (BFS) commenced trading on SIMEX as a clearing member, Leeson opened an error account. "'What's your lucky number?' I asked. 'Eight,' she said. 'Eight is a very lucky Chinese number.' 'How many numbers does it have to be?' 'Five.' 'There you are then,' I said. Let's give it all the luck it can handle. Let's call it 88888.' And so Error Account 88888 was born—the 'Five Eights' account." The transactions in error account 88888 consistently reflected losses from the very beginning. In two years, by December 31, 1994, the losses had accumulated to $260 million and after the collapse of the Barings group, they reached $1.5 billion.

A fast-paced narrative, Rogue Trader chronicles Leeson's humble beginnings as a Watford plasterer's son to the very heart of the cut-and-thrust empire he made his own: the trading ring of SIMEX which took him to dizzying heights and was also responsible for his devastating fall from grace. From "such a red-hot trader", Leeson ultimately earned the epithet of the rogue trader. The book is simultaneously a portrait of one of the most stressful jobs in the world, with its perks and pains in the midst of organised chaos and unstated pressure.

And as Leeson reveals the inside story of this amazing chain of events, the book predictably reeks of a oh-I-am-so-sorry-but-circumstances-got-the-better-of-me syndrome. In depicting his love for wife Lisa, in condoning the mistake of Kim Wong, the new girl who misinterpreted his signals in the trading room, in reiterating his humble beginnings, in passing the buck on to his superiors who consistently failed to see through his misdemeanours, the tale subtly but surely aims at the reader's sympathy.

And quite successfully too. Crackling with dialogues, full of insights, spiced with descriptions of drunken brawls and other quirks, the book indeed makes for compelling reading. However, several questions remain unanswered. Which is really not that surprising. Admitting his forgery, his fraudulent activities, his inability to come clean, his lack of forthrightness and his slightly condescending attitude towards most of his superiors, the book may yet turn out to be another fraud by Leeson.

But as with his Barings stint, Rogue Trader, which saw the highest auction price at the Frankfurt Book Fair, will also be a fraud on a grand scale. And what about a sequel? Or is the book part of the massive camouflage that Leeson admittedly owns up to? Whatever the case may be, the book is recommended reading for its evocation of the sheer atmosphere of the trading ring and for its detailed account of future and options trading. And somewhere along the way the reader is bound to find that Rogue Trader is uncannily reminiscent of another great factual book, Liar's Poker.