Speaker 1: Welcome to this special Bloomberg podcast with me Caroline Hepger
Speaker 1: and alongside our finance reporter Will Shaw. Now, it has
Speaker 1: been thirty years since Bearings Bank, Britain's oldest merchant bank
Speaker 1: at the time, collapsed after twenty eight year old derivatives
Speaker 1: trader Nick Leeson racked up and concealed a billion dollars
Speaker 1: of trading losses at Bearings Singapore office. Lison became the
Speaker 1: face of financial misconduct. He served more than four years
Speaker 1: in Shangy Prison. He wrote a book, Rogue Trader, that
Speaker 1: was then turned into a Hollywood movie. In the decade
Speaker 1: since then, Lison's been on the speaker circuit talking about
Speaker 1: what he calls the most embarrassing period in his life.
Speaker 1: He's owned a football club in Ireland along the way,
Speaker 1: and more recently his work to investigate financial misconduct. And
Speaker 1: Nick Leeson joins us now today. Welcome Nick, good morning.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to have a discussion because of course
Speaker 1: it is thirty years now since the collapse of Bearings.
Speaker 1: How do you think about that whole period in your life,
Speaker 1: the impact that it had both on Bearings and also
Speaker 1: on you with that distance.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, well, I think you summed it up perfectly
Speaker 2: in the beginning. It's still with huge embarrassment on my part.
Speaker 2: You go through, you know, a lot of shame, a
Speaker 2: lot of guilt, embarrassment at the time, but the one
Speaker 2: that stays with you is the embarrassment because it's the
Speaker 2: complete opposite of what I wanted to achieve. And up
Speaker 2: until a certain point, I'd had a fairly good career
Speaker 2: in the world of banking, and then it all imploded
Speaker 2: very very quickly when I was in Singapore. So I was,
Speaker 2: you know, very much the ascending star for a short
Speaker 2: period of time and then had a very spectacular fall
Speaker 2: from grace. And that still sits with you. You can, you know,
Speaker 2: you can recover from a personal perspective, but you still
Speaker 2: look at that period of my life and am I
Speaker 2: Am I comfortable with it? Am I at peace with it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not, because that just wasn't me and what I
Speaker 2: wanted to achieve. But it's always going to be the
Speaker 2: piece of baggage that I carry around.
Speaker 3: You were the star trader sent sent from London to Singapore.
Speaker 3: You made the bank a lot of money over the years,
Speaker 3: you built up positions, particularly in the Nickey. At what
Speaker 3: point did you know that the cover up of the
Speaker 3: trades couldn't be hidden anymore? Like, what was the key
Speaker 3: moment when you knew it was going to unravel.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to put an absolute definite answer on that.
Speaker 2: I think I was always as deep as I was
Speaker 2: getting into the situation, as bad as it was getting,
Speaker 2: you were always you're always looking for this slight positive,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the market to turn around a little bit,
Speaker 2: or you've managed to overcome a particular investigation from somebody
Speaker 2: within the bank, and that always gave you the belief
Speaker 2: that you had a little bit more time to try
Speaker 2: and solve the situation, which is really all I was
Speaker 2: ever interested in doing. You know, I know I should
Speaker 2: never have got into the situation as soon as I
Speaker 2: was in it and it was getting worse. All I
Speaker 2: wanted to do was solve it. So you'd grab these
Speaker 2: positives and when you look back with hindsight, they're all
Speaker 2: false positives. But they just convinced me that I had
Speaker 2: a little bit more time to try and turn the
Speaker 2: situation around. And you know, there were no barriers or
Speaker 2: controls to what I was doing and I was. I
Speaker 2: was never pushed back on at all in terms of
Speaker 2: how far I could take it, unfortunately, and I.
Speaker 1: Mean even I mean you flared at one point, and
Speaker 1: you and you you went a Kuala Lumpur, and even
Speaker 1: at that point, according to your book, you kind of
Speaker 1: you didn't think that the bank was going to collapse.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I mean as a young trader working
Speaker 2: in Singapore. You know, the last thing that you know,
Speaker 2: I was interested in was what was the capital base
Speaker 2: of the bank. You know, that was that was a
Speaker 2: different area. You know, the Treasury would look after the
Speaker 2: capital base of the bank, how the reporting was done
Speaker 2: to the Bank of England at the time, and what
Speaker 2: were the legal limits you could lend to a subsidiary.
Speaker 2: They weren't something that I thought about. If I phoned
Speaker 2: Treasury and I asked them fifty million pounds or fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars or one hundred million dollars, if they paid
Speaker 2: that over to me, you know, that was the end
Speaker 2: of the transaction. How it impacted on the rest of
Speaker 2: the organization in terms of the capital base and how
Speaker 2: much it was lending to a subsidiary. You know, they
Speaker 2: weren't processes or thought processes that I was going through,
Speaker 2: you know, when you look back at the story, and
Speaker 2: I had six hundred and fifty million pounds of me
Speaker 2: in Singapore, the capital base of the bank was only
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty million legal limit you could.
Speaker 1: Endure a subsidiaries fifty and you were because you were
Speaker 1: in charge of the office in.
Speaker 2: Singapore, right, Yeah, I didn't have access to the money,
Speaker 2: you know. I still had to refer to a treasurer
Speaker 2: in London to ask for the money, and then he
Speaker 2: would pay the money over. I'd give him nonsensical reasons
Speaker 2: for the money, you know, and was definitely definitely concealing
Speaker 2: the real reason for needing the money at that time.
Speaker 2: But the fact that it went past so many limits
Speaker 2: and regulatory limits in terms of you know, twenty percent
Speaker 2: of the bank's capital being lent to a subsidiary. You know,
Speaker 2: I was in thirteen times in breach of that. But
Speaker 2: the Treasury Department allowed that to happen. Doesn't take away
Speaker 2: any of my guilt or my responsibility, but you know,
Speaker 2: that's part of the processes that should have been in
Speaker 2: place to stop this sort of thing happening.
Speaker 3: Do you recall the specific time when you started to
Speaker 3: turn your life around afterwards.
Speaker 2: After the collapse of the bank, Yeah, and after.
Speaker 3: Your time and your time in prison and all the
Speaker 3: all the repercussions, Like, what was the kind of key
Speaker 3: turning point for you and rebuilding?
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a again, I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's a key turning point. I think it's a
Speaker 2: slow process. You you know, when you're in prison and
Speaker 2: you're looking at everything that you've done, that you've done
Speaker 2: and you've been involved in, you go through this process
Speaker 2: of really pulling back the layers of what's happened, and
Speaker 2: you have to really have a long, hard look at yourself.
Speaker 2: You you know, you you get to a situation where
Speaker 2: you dislike a lot of things that you've done, which
Speaker 2: was obvious. But then at some point, and it's probably
Speaker 2: a couple of years after release, you have to start
Speaker 2: looking at yourself and protecting yourself. So it becomes about
Speaker 2: looking at or building back up your self esteem, your
Speaker 2: self worth, your self confidence, and that comes through, you know.
Speaker 2: One of the ways that I suppose it's worked for
Speaker 2: me over the years has been fairly open with the
Speaker 2: world's media. Yeah, you know, I've never been combative in
Speaker 2: terms of you know, people looking for me for a story.
Speaker 2: You know I prefer and I should have started this
Speaker 2: a lot earlier, I know that. But you know I
Speaker 2: prefer to be very honest and very open book about
Speaker 2: about things that happened, and you know the ways that
Speaker 2: I reacted to things during that period.
Speaker 1: But there is still a tension, isn't there? And I
Speaker 1: think this is also why your story even now is
Speaker 1: so fascinating to so many people in finance, which is
Speaker 1: that tension between the rogue trader. And others have mentioned this,
Speaker 1: like Jerome Cavill. You know, he's talked about he made
Speaker 1: enormous losses for his bank a few years ago in
Speaker 1: the Billions, and he talks about being scapegoated versus the
Speaker 1: kind of controls that should be in place, and that
Speaker 1: there's that tension there, isn't it. How much responsibility is
Speaker 1: on the individual versus actually the oversight that should be there, and.
Speaker 2: It's a combination of the two. I think anybody who
Speaker 2: describes themselves as a scapeboat scapegoat is lying. Right. You
Speaker 2: know what you're doing, you know you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 2: You continue all the same, and therefore you're responsible and
Speaker 2: you need to take responsibility for your actions. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the other road traders that you can mention, Quaker, Duboli,
Speaker 2: your own Curvial, Iguci at Diora, there's probably too many
Speaker 2: to mention. A lot of them talk about pressure to perform. Again,
Speaker 2: it's rubbish. This is a decision between right and wrong,
Speaker 2: and you know that it's wrong from the beginning, and
Speaker 2: you know that you're going down the wrong path, and
Speaker 2: you continue for various reasons, and you know, I prefer
Speaker 2: to focus on the reasons rather than trying to blame
Speaker 2: somebody else. It's a shortcoming in my personality as much
Speaker 2: as it was with Curvial and Adiboli. They took the
Speaker 2: wrong path, they made the wrong decision, and they covered
Speaker 2: up from that particular point. Yes, the bank has a
Speaker 2: responsibility to make sure that they have systems, controls and
Speaker 2: policies in place. And you know the fact that their
Speaker 2: negligent doesn't take away your guilt. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we have a difference of opinion with the in
Speaker 2: terms of how the other road traders view some of
Speaker 2: these things.
Speaker 3: Looking back at the reporting at the time, it seems
Speaker 3: like there was a strong kind of clust dimensioned in
Speaker 3: some respects as to what happens. You came from Watford,
Speaker 3: you were the son of a pluster, You rose very
Speaker 3: fast through the ranks as.
Speaker 2: You depicted it.
Speaker 3: The leaders of Bearings were sort of posh, foolish, not
Speaker 3: in control of the company that they were running.
Speaker 2: Like to what degree was like clus part of that story?
Speaker 3: And do you see is that route still there for
Speaker 3: people for people to rise high and fast in banks
Speaker 3: like that today?
Speaker 2: But there is. If you're successful, you're gonna You're going
Speaker 2: to succeed in any business. I think sometimes the trajectory
Speaker 2: is a bit quicker within the world of banking. But
Speaker 2: the whole class element element of it, which comes through
Speaker 2: in the first chapter of Road Trader, is probably the
Speaker 2: part of the book that I just don't agree with.
Speaker 2: But you know, I was stuck in prison in Germany.
Speaker 2: I had massive legal bills that need to be met.
Speaker 2: So when we were or when I was co authoring
Speaker 2: the book with Edward Whitley at the time, he wrote
Speaker 2: that chapter and it was very keen or the publishers
Speaker 2: were very keen that that was you know that that
Speaker 2: whole part of it, the class, the class conflict, if
Speaker 2: you like, was embellished through that first chapter. So it's
Speaker 2: not something that I ever really felt. I was always
Speaker 2: you know, I always enjoyed the week spot spent. So
Speaker 2: let me rephrase that. I never spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in the city socializing with the people that worked
Speaker 2: in the city because they weren't really my type of people.
Speaker 2: You know. I grew up on a council estate in
Speaker 2: Watford and I used to like going back home at
Speaker 2: the weekends to go out with my friends rather than
Speaker 2: spending my time in the city. For me, it was
Speaker 2: very much a job of work, and friends that I
Speaker 2: made in the city at the time were always quite transient,
Speaker 2: and I think it is a transient industry as people
Speaker 2: move and push on within that. So there wasn't you know.
Speaker 2: I just don't agree with the class element or a
Speaker 2: class warfare element of it that is depicted in the
Speaker 2: book and some of the media made a big story
Speaker 2: of at the time. It's just not the way that
Speaker 2: I felt. I always felt very welcome. I was very socially.
Speaker 2: A debt which I think was to you know, in
Speaker 2: my favor throughout that whole period enabled me to move
Speaker 2: in some of the circles that they did and transgress
Speaker 2: some of the rules that I did throughout that period
Speaker 2: as well. But yeah, no, look, I never it was
Speaker 2: you know, working class versus upper class scenario, which was
Speaker 2: which was maybe made a bit more of at the time.
Speaker 1: At the time, you know, it was certainly a feature,
Speaker 1: wasn't it in the reporting and in the book, as
Speaker 1: you say, But that idea of that trajectory, I mean,
Speaker 1: leave you know, you left school. I think you left
Speaker 1: school at eighteen. You certainly didn't go to university. You
Speaker 1: went straight into a bank, not Bearings to start with.
Speaker 1: You had a couple of different jobs before you got
Speaker 1: to Bearings. But that kind of route in the city,
Speaker 1: I mean, even the kind of type of trading that
Speaker 1: you were doing. That's it's the open outcross all of that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it's disappeared. Yeah, it's a thing of
Speaker 1: the past, isn't it. But is that route still open
Speaker 1: of that kind of coming into the city and being
Speaker 1: able to make it.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's it's a far harder route these days.
Speaker 2: And I think if you go back to that period,
Speaker 2: if you look at you know, you know, I started
Speaker 2: working the city in nineteen eighty five, so you've got
Speaker 2: Big Bang nineteen eighty seven. So they've got lots of
Speaker 2: new banks coming into the city. They're all looking for staff.
Speaker 2: So you used to get off of the off of
Speaker 2: the Tube Bank and you'd be handed one of those
Speaker 2: you know, little magazines and it'd be full of jobs
Speaker 2: and you could you could quite easily change a job
Speaker 2: every couple of weeks if you wanted to, with a
Speaker 2: tiny bit of experience. Tiny bit of experience, and you know,
Speaker 2: that was enough to give you that opportunity to move
Speaker 2: into another organization. So I was two years at Coots
Speaker 2: and Company just down the road here, you know, moved
Speaker 2: to Morgan Stanley, worked for Morgan Stanley for two years
Speaker 2: and then then was headhunted to Bearings. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: there was lots of opportunity, and I think you can't
Speaker 2: take that away from some of the things that happened
Speaker 2: during that period. You you know, you've got this process
Speaker 2: of deregulation where everything is you know, ramping up in
Speaker 2: terms of how big the city is becoming and how
Speaker 2: many people are working in the city, and you know,
Speaker 2: the systems, the controls, the policies weren't in place in
Speaker 2: some of those organizations in order to safeguard it.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like systems and controls are better now
Speaker 3: that there are more safeguards in place to prevent this
Speaker 3: kind of thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. You you know, like I speak
Speaker 2: at lots of different events and conferences where you know compliance,
Speaker 2: risk management, governance and the theme, and you know you
Speaker 2: can't underestimate how many people work in those areas now.
Speaker 2: You know, like when I think back to my time
Speaker 2: at Bearings, we had one compliance officer I think she
Speaker 2: was also the risk manager for two and a half
Speaker 2: thousand people. You walk into most offices now in Canary
Speaker 2: Warfare around this area and there's three thousand people working
Speaker 2: in compliance. So you know it's come on in massive
Speaker 2: leaps and bounds since that time. The quality of people
Speaker 2: are better, they're better educated, you know, they're getting better
Speaker 2: training within those organizations. But when you still have an
Speaker 2: episode like mcquarie happening within the last two years, where
Speaker 2: there were four hundred and fifty fictitious traits, you have
Speaker 2: to question how on earth that happens? And no, I
Speaker 2: suppose no.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration is looking to deregulate quite fast. There's
Speaker 3: potentially new risk going to a merger and things like
Speaker 3: AI and crypto. I mean, do you worry about the
Speaker 3: regulatory environment and the level and the level of risk.
Speaker 2: I don't worry for me, you know, maybe you I
Speaker 2: think there's a worry for the markets. You know, there's
Speaker 2: always these niche areas that throw up anomaly. So you've
Speaker 2: got you know, you had the episode with Archagos a
Speaker 2: few years ago, You've got Credit Suisse who've gone by
Speaker 2: the wayside over the last number of years. You've got
Speaker 2: this thing that's happened with the McQuary. So is it
Speaker 2: one hundred percent safe? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Well, we're also at a very We're at an interesting point,
Speaker 1: aren't we, in terms of the Trump administration wanting to
Speaker 1: roll back the financial crisis era regulations and that that
Speaker 1: is going to surely put pressure on the UK and
Speaker 1: Europe to do the same. And for Britain it's very
Speaker 1: much about trying to you know, financial service has been
Speaker 1: quite unloved for around Brexit and for quite a long
Speaker 1: time now. It's perhaps needed in order to boost second
Speaker 1: growth importance, So you know, is there a concern that
Speaker 1: that is going to become more of a dominant theme again?
Speaker 1: How do you get a grip of that.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the elastic band went too far in
Speaker 2: the opposite direction. When you had the global financial collapse
Speaker 2: and you've got Dodd Frank and everything else that came
Speaker 2: in around that time, the controls were just too much
Speaker 2: and that restricted a lot of business getting done. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's definitely a need to pull
Speaker 2: back a little bit on that. And you've seen that
Speaker 2: happen over the last number of years. Whether you're going
Speaker 2: to go to full deregulation, quite how far it's going
Speaker 2: to go, is going to open, is going to open
Speaker 2: certain doors to allow things to go wrong again, And
Speaker 2: you know, you've got to be very very careful when
Speaker 2: people talk about deregulation. You know, that throws me back
Speaker 2: to that period in nineteen eighty seven when I was
Speaker 2: starting in the city and it was all of that opportunity,
Speaker 2: you know, the opportunity to move and move into the city,
Speaker 2: get jobs, move on within the different organizations, but also
Speaker 2: the controls systems weren't good enough. If you're getting that
Speaker 2: right and the industry is perfectly safe, then deregulate and
Speaker 2: pull back on some of that regulation. But mcquarie is
Speaker 2: the one that worries me. How can you have four
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty fictitious trades? It is just so basic
Speaker 2: an oversight. This is like kid stuff. And yet you've
Speaker 2: got an organization that's missed four hundred and fifty trades.
Speaker 2: They haven't reconciled them, they've not been able to see
Speaker 2: that they've they're not been able to guarantee any of
Speaker 2: those trades. Yet. This has happened less than two years ago.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that Macquarie would want to defend themselves
Speaker 1: on that point and give their explanation.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that I'm sure they would want to, but
Speaker 2: they wouldn't be able to. They are fictitious trades. The
Speaker 2: key is in the word fictitious. They didn't exist, So
Speaker 2: how did you allow them to survive as an offset
Speaker 2: for a young trader within your organization for so long?
Speaker 2: That's where you get fined.
Speaker 3: Do you think what happened there is a sign of
Speaker 3: wider risks that are there in the end history and
Speaker 3: that that's just the tip of an iceberg?
Speaker 2: Or no, No, I think it's an isolated case, as
Speaker 2: was bearings all of those years ago. Now you've got
Speaker 2: you know, you've got a number of rogue trading episodes
Speaker 2: that spun off of the back of bearings and came
Speaker 2: to light because of bearings. You've got haman Arka at
Speaker 2: summertomo Igucci at Daiwa. You know, these were going on
Speaker 2: at the same time, so it wasn't an isolated incident.
Speaker 2: I think mcquarie is an isolated incident. But you know,
Speaker 2: one incident is too many. Maybe I shouldn't use McQuary's
Speaker 2: name so much.
Speaker 3: One of your jobs is to investigate financial misconduct via
Speaker 3: via red myst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does your work there involve. Well, my part
Speaker 2: of the work is probably more forensic. It goes back to,
Speaker 2: you know, looking at what my skill sets were when
Speaker 2: I worked in Coots and Morgan Stanley, and just looking
Speaker 2: at data and conversations and other things that are going
Speaker 2: on where there is something conduct within within organizations, and
Speaker 2: just pulling all that together. You know, I've always thought
Speaker 2: that I had a fairly photographic memory, so I'm using
Speaker 2: that again and just pulling those strands of information and
Speaker 2: seeing where we can expose misconduct within organizations.
Speaker 3: And where are you finding is the most prevalent place
Speaker 3: for that kind of misconduct, So where are.
Speaker 2: The weak links. It's all over the place really, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you. We look at some things which
Speaker 2: involve a certain amount of sexual harassment. There are certain
Speaker 2: episodes where that comes to the fore we're seeing that
Speaker 2: being quite prevalent at the moment. We look at other
Speaker 2: cases which have resulted, you know, maybe in some trading
Speaker 2: episodes that aren't correctly following procedure, where there's a lack
Speaker 2: of surveillance over some of how those trades are being
Speaker 2: trades are being followed through the organization. It's really quite
Speaker 2: widespread and it's quite interesting and it's good for me
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm enjoying it at the moment.
Speaker 1: Back to financial services in terms of the UK regulator,
Speaker 1: I mean we've seen, for example, the SEC chair go
Speaker 1: In the US, there has been some pressure on the fcchair.
Speaker 1: And there's always criticism of the UK regulator. I mean,
Speaker 1: back when it was the FSA, you were quite critical
Speaker 1: of it in your historic case, but you've also been
Speaker 1: critical of it recently in the kind of FCA. Guys,
Speaker 1: how much robustness is there for the FCA. You know,
Speaker 1: the regulators always are quite criticized. They're often also quite
Speaker 1: underfunded in lots of ways and are limited in their scope.
Speaker 1: For example, how do you think the UK's regulatory system
Speaker 1: is measuring up now.
Speaker 2: I think it's improved a lot. I think there needs
Speaker 2: to be you know, there needs to be more communication
Speaker 2: and conversations with the banks that they need to work together.
Speaker 2: I think different regulators are better at doing that, you know,
Speaker 2: allying with some of the banks and bringing better controls
Speaker 2: to the FOE. I'm not sure, you know, obviously I'm
Speaker 2: a million miles away from regulation these days. You know,
Speaker 2: I would have been a bit closer to it all
Speaker 2: of those years ago, But you know, it's still a
Speaker 2: job of work to be done. They're always slightly behind
Speaker 2: the curve. That's always going to be the case. I
Speaker 2: think if you look at the number of people who
Speaker 2: work in the FCA and how many people work in
Speaker 2: the City of London, there's a huge disparity. So it's
Speaker 2: very difficult to man mark what's going on within those organizations.
Speaker 2: So you need the banks to get it right, and
Speaker 2: you need the banks to have robust, tough controls within
Speaker 2: their within their own organizations. And then when people do
Speaker 2: step over the line, when they do commit fraud or
Speaker 2: they do something that's wrong. They need to be punished.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's been a bit more of that
Speaker 2: over the years and you hear of more and more cases,
Speaker 2: but it does still happen. But I think the banks
Speaker 2: are catching it far quicker. The FCA has a role
Speaker 2: within that, but there's still a job of work to
Speaker 2: be done.
Speaker 3: When you're brought in to talk to the corporations about
Speaker 3: your experiences, is there a particular piece of advice that
Speaker 3: you give to them.
Speaker 2: The piece of vice is really easy and it's you know,
Speaker 2: I delivered the same piece of advice to my children
Speaker 2: as well. You know, if you find yourself in a
Speaker 2: difficult situation, always ask for help and advice. You know,
Speaker 2: I was surrounded by people that could have helped me,
Speaker 2: but I didn't do that really simple thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: back in it's a very different world today than it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen nineties banking. You know, asking for help
Speaker 2: was seen as a sign of weakness and you probably
Speaker 2: would have been just you know, not dismissed from the firm,
Speaker 2: but dismissed with it quite quite easily. But you should
Speaker 2: have seen it, or at the time, I should have
Speaker 2: seen it as a sign of trying to do things correctly.
Speaker 2: And it's such a simple thing. And you you know,
Speaker 2: as I explained it to my children, if they find
Speaker 2: themselves in a difficult situation, just come to me and
Speaker 2: tell me what's going on. You know that there might
Speaker 2: be a difficult period, but I'll help you through it.
Speaker 2: And that's what I needed at the time. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, just more communication is such an important tool.
Speaker 1: Nick, Can I say, You've had such a colorful life,
Speaker 1: You've written a couple of books, You've been, as I
Speaker 1: said to Jail, you've been, you know, widely understood as
Speaker 1: a kind of road trader, sort of posed a person
Speaker 1: for that, and yet you've done so many things since then.
Speaker 2: Do you sort of mourn.
Speaker 1: The life that you might have had had that not happened?
Speaker 1: How do you know, put it into perspective? Now thirty
Speaker 1: years later and you're still talking about it, still sort
Speaker 1: of attached to the financial industry.
Speaker 2: How do you think about it? They probably don't like
Speaker 2: the attachment, but no, it's Look, it's a very real story.
Speaker 2: It happened. There's no way that you can avoid that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: you do see certain facets of it coming back into
Speaker 2: not not always just the financial services industry. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, businesses and industries outside of the world of
Speaker 2: finance have had to pick up on compliance with some
Speaker 2: management government. You know, you've got huge failures over the
Speaker 2: last number of years kaillion and an episode such as that,
Speaker 2: so everybody's had to up their game in that regard.
Speaker 2: I don't specifically go into these organizations and try to
Speaker 2: give advice. I kind of I feel a bit fake
Speaker 2: if that was the process. You know, I go in,
Speaker 2: I tell stories. You know, I can go through in fairly,
Speaker 2: fairly close detail or extensive detail about what happened during
Speaker 2: that period, because nobody really knows it better than me.
Speaker 2: And if that then leads them to look at something
Speaker 2: quite differently within their organization, then I think that's sort
Speaker 2: of benefit. I also color compliance and risk management parts
Speaker 2: of learning within those organizations because it's usually fairly dull
Speaker 2: and most people try not to attend, so bringing me
Speaker 2: in make sure they get a few more bums on seats,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's a reason to why you're learning
Speaker 2: this and why you need to do this properly.
Speaker 1: Okay, As as the last thought, if there is another
Speaker 1: Nick Lison out there, now, what did you say to
Speaker 1: him or her her stop.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's not worth it. I you know,
Speaker 2: I remember doing a treasury management conference in the Barbicane,
Speaker 2: you know, a good few years ago now, and one
Speaker 2: treasurer came over to me and he said, look, I've
Speaker 2: got I'd like to ask a piece of advice. And
Speaker 2: you know, I started off by saying that, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I'm the right person for that, but
Speaker 2: you know, I'll do my best to respond as honestly
Speaker 2: as I can. And he said, there's a bit of
Speaker 2: an issue and it was for one of the biggest
Speaker 2: UK banks at the time. He said, I've got a
Speaker 2: bit of an issue. I'm not happy with something that's
Speaker 2: going on within the organization. I've got an email in
Speaker 2: my outbox that I want to send, but I just
Speaker 2: don't have the courage to send it at this time.
Speaker 2: What do you think I should do? And I said, look,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know the specific instance, but the
Speaker 2: one piece of advice I can give you is it's
Speaker 2: it's far easier to get another job, it's not so
Speaker 2: easy to get another repute. And you know, you've got
Speaker 2: to make the right decision on that basis. You know, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: you know, my reputation might be slightly different than it
Speaker 2: was back in nineteen ninety five when this when the
Speaker 2: story came to everybody's attention, but it's still a bad reputation.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, that's interesting that you feel that that you're
Speaker 1: still very much stuck with even though you did the
Speaker 1: present time and it's a long time ago, you still
Speaker 1: feel that you're really saddled with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I think you You know, people have asked
Speaker 2: me if I'm you know, comfortable or content with that
Speaker 2: particular period in my life. I never will be. I
Speaker 2: never will be because it's the complete opposite of what
Speaker 2: I wanted to achieve. Am I content with myself? Yes,
Speaker 2: you know what I represent, you know, my family values
Speaker 2: and everything else, But the focus is very different. It's
Speaker 2: not on being successful and succeeding within the world of fine,
Speaker 2: which is what I wanted to do. So, you know,
Speaker 2: you have to change your focus a little bit, and
Speaker 2: that enables you to move forward. Whereas you know, speaking
Speaker 2: about it so openly, honestly and regularly means that it's
Speaker 2: not this you know, it's not this big ogre that
Speaker 2: follows me around all the time. It's part of my life,
Speaker 2: it's part of who I am today, but it's not.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't quite have the level of shame,
Speaker 2: guilt and embarrassment as it did years ago, but it
Speaker 2: still has a certain amount of embarrassment.