Barings Bank

Barings Bank was a British merchant bank founded in London in 1762 by Francis Baring as the firm John and Francis Baring Company, and it grew over the following century into one of the most prestigious and influential banking houses in Britain, so central to European finance that the French statesman the Duc de Richelieu is said to have remarked there were six great powers in Europe, naming England, France, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Baring Brothers. The bank financed major sovereign transactions, including underwriting a large share of the United States' 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France, and it built a long-standing relationship with the British monarchy, serving as banker to the royal family for generations. Barings survived a near collapse in 1890 caused by risky Argentine investments, rescued that time by a Bank of England-led consortium, but it could not survive a second crisis over a century later. In 1995 the bank collapsed after a rogue trader in its Singapore office, Nick Leeson, ran up unauthorized derivatives trading losses exceeding 800 million pounds, and the 233-year-old institution was subsequently acquired by the Dutch bank ING for a nominal sum of one pound.