As an unsupervised young chief trader in Singapore in 1995, Nicholas W. Leeson lost $1.3 billion in frenzied trades in Japanese stock futures and bonds, destroying his employer, the 233-year-old Barings Bank, which had Queen Elizabeth as a customer.Now, Mr. Leeson, having served four years in prison and survived a bout with colon cancer, has managed to turn those money-losing bets into a money-making enterprise ? warning bankers of their continuing vulnerability to rogue traders.
The paradox is that he is earning a very good living from a notorious past, getting ?5,000 ($9,800) a speech.
So says a December 26, 2006 New York Times report about Nick Leeson. The 1995 Ig Nobel Economics Prize was:
Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank
and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for using the
calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial
institution has its limits.
(Thanks to Freakonomics for bringing this to our attention.)