Barings Bank (1762 to 1995) was the oldest merchant bank in London, founded and owned by the German-origined Baring family. The bank collapsed in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million ($1.3 billion) due to speculative investing, primarily in futures contracts, at the bank's Singapore office.
Read more about Barings Bank: 1995 Collapse
Famous quotes containing the word bank:
“Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last—but swoop! we launch into the great sea! Yet the geographers say, even then we must not despair, because across the great sea, however desolate & vacant it may look, lie all Persia & the delicious lands roundabout Damascus.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)