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Look at a tasteless/indecent extract and it’s an abomination; see it in context and, well, it’s contexted.Mrs Bottomley invokes the idea of protecting children to further her argument. But no one has yet caught the feel for what it was like to work in that booming business, or to explain how the successful tail in Asia came to wag the sleepy dog back in London.When Mr Leeson seemed to be such a successful trader (remember that he was showing his profits to the bank and dumping his losses in a secret account) it was easy to play on the split personality of the bank, for the Baring Securities operation had not been fully integrated into the Baring Brothers business. Most people within the City are aware of the extraordinary business that Mr Heath created, and periodically he hit the headlines as one of the highest- paid Britons. Had those two lessons been heeded, the whole catastrophe, for both the individual and the firm, would have been avoided.Where the book really breaks new ground is in bringing together the tale of Mr Leeson and that of the rejuvenation of Barings following the development of its Far East business, Baring Securities, by Christopher Heath.

And the bank would have been taught that it had to give special supervision to this dealer. Had Mr Leeson’s application been pursued in London he would have been taught that not paying debts is liable to be a black mark in career terms. When the county court judgment was reported back to Barings the application was quietly withdrawn and he moved to Singapore.This may seem a detail, but it is an important one. He or she would, however, probably be subject to a probationary period and would be under special supervision by the employer.Second, Mr Leeson was not refused a licence. First, as Christopher Sharples, the chairman of the SFA, explains in the book, a county court judgment would not necessarily disqualify a trader. There was an outstanding judgment for pounds 2,426 on behalf of NatWest.

This has been cited in the press as a reason why he was refused a licence to trade in London That actually is not technically correct in two respects. The regulatory body, the Securities and Futures Authority, checked on his application statement that he had not had any county court judgments against him and found that he had. The book is useful in clarifying some odd little details, for example, the full story of why he did not get a dealing seat in London. It is not an instant book, heavy on the cliches of money and power; rather a briskly written but brave stab at explaining the incomprehensible.The story of Nick Leeson’s rise from junior clerk in Barings in London to head of trading in its Singapore office is well-enough known to require little elaboration. Because she worked with these people her Going for Broke – Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank (HarperCollins, pounds 14.99) takes a good shot at the “why”.She is able to bring a torch into two of the dark corners of the tale where the explanation ultimately will be revealed: the mind of the individual gambler and the managerial dynamics that allowed that gambler to blow everybody else’s chips. The problem is not just that they are frequently a sloppy job: you need some passage of time before events can fall into coherent focus.
Judith Rawnsley is a British financial journalist who by happy coincidence used to work for Barings in Tokyo. But it did happen and the test of any account of these extraordinary events is surely whether it can answer the question “why?” Instant books have a bad reputation and with good reason.