<<Up     Contents

Barings Bank

Redirected from Barings PLC

Barings Bank, previously known as Baring Brothers & Co., is the oldest merchant banking company in England, having been founded in 1762.

Baring collapsed on February 26, 1995, due to the activities of one trader, Nick Leeson, who lost $1.4 billion by gambling on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. This was the second time Barings had faced bankruptcy, the first being in 1890 when a significant amount of investment was lost in South America following the Argentinan revolution[?]. However, at that time, they had been bailed out by the Bank of England and other London banks.

Barings was purchased by the Dutch bank/insurance company ING after its collapse and no longer has a separate corporate existence. Its name lives on in Baring Asset Management.

Nick Leeson's autobiography of the event leading up to the collapse were dramatized in the movie Rogue Trader[?].

External Links

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump