Nick Leeson cashes in on crisis

Nick Leeson, the derivatives trader who brought down Barings Bank in 1995, is doing very well out of the current financial crisis, becoming a much in demand speaker at economic forums. "Often it's in places that have seen recent success, like Estonia or Iceland or Dubai," he says in an interview in the Daily Telegraph,"but where they have little experience in developing systems of oversight."

Although Leeson (pictured) received a six-year prison sentence for his Barings escapade, he has of course been easily overtaken by Bernie Madoff in the financial rogues’ league. "A couple of friends rang up to tell me I wasn't number one any more," he says, "but the thing is, what I did was the most embarrassing thing I've ever done.”

Of Rogue Trader, the book and film that documented his fall from grace, he says: "I wrote 80 per cent of the book, and a ghostwriter wrote 20 per cent. He told me that if I upped the class-warfare aspect, and made the Barings bosses seem like upper-class twits, it would sell more copies. They were incompetent, but not as dumb as the book and film made them out to be."

He still trades from his laptop - betting "between 2,500 and 5,000 euros a week" – and says he has done very nicely out of trading on the dollar and on oil prices. "You have to have an opinion. You study a few charts and see where the support levels are and put a stop to limit the losses."