Everyone's heard of Nick Leeson...well this is his story.
Imagine the scene....It's 1995, Nick Leeson is working in the back office for Barings, and eventually gets sent to Singapore to manage the trading floor. There he looses a big customer for Barings, and due to the loss he gains, he gambles on the market going up. Yes...you guessed it...it went down and down until the loss couldn't be covered up any more.
For anyone interested in finance/stocks/shares this is a brilliant film to watch.
For people that have little or no understanding of markets, this will be a film that will be difficult to get into to. To fully enjoy the film and to understand how he looses all the money you must understand what goes on.
Basically you must learn two phrases:
Futures Options
Futures are basically a bet on the market. If the market is say at 5000, you bet it will go up(long) or down (short). Every point above 5000 you gain money depending on how much you put on each point. In this case it's hundreds of thousands of pounds per point.
Options are basically the same although you state what the market will be at, at a future date.
Nick explains this briefly at the start of the film anyway.
Nick starts off working in the back office for Barings, and does so well that his manager wants him to go to Jakarta to clear up some bonds. This is an irrelevent part of the film, except for the fact that this is where he meets Lisa, his future wife.
Doing another great job, he gets promoted to Manager of the trading floor in Singapore, a much more important market.
You will be baffled by all the hand waving, finger signals, shouting in the trading room, and this is where one of his assistants mucks up. Instead of buying a contract, she sells them.
This causes a loss of £20,000. Coming up to Christmas the losses grow up to £10,000,000. Through good luck, and hard work he manages to trade of of that position and makes all that money back. Trying to recover all that money he has to recruit more people onto his books. Pierre Bo Marche is his answer. This guy is one of the biggest traders in town and the commission Nick earns off him is massive. But he hasn't made it because he's only really made a loss into a break even figure.
Never the less, it shows up on the balance sheet as a profit of £10,000,000.
Nick is a star, and gets to go to London to host speeches and so on.
Into the New Year then, Nick gets a shock. Bo Marche wants to place a big trade but a rival bank has offered him a better deal than Nick can do.
Not wanting to loose Bo Marche, Nick does the trade, but ends up making a loss from it.
This loss grows and grows as he bets on the market trying to gamble again and recover the money. His luck isn't going with him though and soon he starts asking London for more and more money to cover his losses. It's not in small amounts either, £145M in 1 week!!
As losses grow and the directors are going mad Nick gets the shock of his life. Another trader (Danny) rings him in the middle of the night to ask him to turn the TV on. The Kobe earthquake has took place, knocking the market for six.
This looses Nick £50M in just one day.
Eventually his losses grow until he can't take it any more and leaves. Eventually collapsing Barings with debts of £850M he flees to Frankfurt, only to be caught in Abu Dabi and arrested.
The soundtrack is also good and works brilliant in the film. Travis, Manic Street Preachers, Reef, Finley Quaye, The Clash and Leftfield all feature in Rogue Trader.
The acting is brilliant, Ewan and Anna really work hard and the outcome is amazing. Whether this is the "real" story or not we will never know, but it shows one amazing true story that you will never forget.
Total running time is 97 minutes. Rating: 15
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
You shouldn't really give away the full plot and ending when writing a review. I gave you a Helpful rather than a fairly helpful because the story is so well known and therefore not too much damage done. But anyone not knowing the story and checking out this op to get a feel for the film would have had their enjoyment spoiled - as you have given everything away. May be worth bearing in mind for the future...
1995. The Far-Eastern money market is still emerging, and the scene is set for one naive ... more
young Englishman to appear out of nowhere to bend the rules. Working from the Singapore office of the Queen's bankers, Nick Leeson (Ewan McGregor) would appear to ...
1995: the Far-Eastern money market is still emerging and the scene is set for one ... more
na'ƒ¯ve young Englishman to appear out of nowhere to bend the rules. Working from the Singapore office of the Queen's bankers Nick Leeson (McGregor) would appear ...
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![Rogue Trader [DVD] [1999]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78534725.jpg "Rogue Trader [DVD] [1999]")
Sep 4th, 2001
very helpful by (60%):
helpful by (40%):
