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Rogue trader
Threat advisory: Under evaluation
Movie propaganda
A young man in a hurry who went too far, too fast.
The year is 1995 and the world's headlines are reverberating with the sensational news of the Barings Bank fiasco. Details emerge of a rogue trader (Ewan McGregor as Nick Leeson) who has single-handedly run up debts of over a billion dollars, bankrupting the world's oldest merchant bank and threatening to send the money markets into a disastrous free fall.
To the average man-in-the-street, such information is part of an alien world of big deals, high-flyers and over-sized pay bonuses. What really catches their attention, however, is the fact that when the figure "in the eye of the storm" is finally captured and brought to trial, he is not a blue-blooded financial wizard with a Harvard business degree, but a nobody who had a dream of making it big.
He is one of them.
A modern parable for our times, Rogue trader is a gripping roller-coaster ride through the secretive world of the deal and the deal-maker, the highs and lows of the financial indexes, and the riches and recriminations of the world's money markets. It's also a romantic thriller about an ordinary guy who simply got out of his depth. In doing so, he managed to bring down the 200-year-old Barings Bank - one of the most traditional pillars of the establishment and bankers to the Queen - in a financial disaster that made headline news around the globe.
Also starring Nigel Lindsay, Irene Ng, Simon Shepherd and Anna Friel. Based on a book by Nick Leeson. Written and directed by James Deardon.
Security censorship classification
*
Not for public release in Australia before date
25 November 1999
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