In 1995 Nick Leeson brought Barings Bank to its knees by reckless speculation in Singapore. The most famous bank in the world was gone. Less widely known is the collapse of Barings Bank almost 100 years earlier, in November 1890. This time the reckless speculation was in South America, and not by an employee out of his depth but by its senior partner - and the sum involved, in today's terms was the same £1 billion! This book tells the story of the "Baring Crisis of 1890" and how two sisters from Devon captured two partners of Barings and persuaded them to recover their lost inheritance - the Flete and Membland Estates. But this principality in South Devon did not last. Rivalries and indulgence took their toll a speculation too far brought Barings Bank to the verge of bankruptcy - with tragic results for the key players in this Victorian melodrama. The success and subsequent failure of the bank is also about four families whosehistory runs in parallel with the unfolding events in South America that were destined to run Barings onto the rocks.On Saturday 8th November 1890, Lord Revelstoke, Francis Baring and Everard Hambro met William Lidderdale, the Governor of the Bank of England and Baring Bank's calamitous situation started to emerge. Lidderdale sent a note to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen "hoping that he might be in town early on Monday morning the 10th November". Lidderdale spent an anxious weekend knowing what was about to happen. Lord Goschen spent an anxious weekend not knowing what was about to happen. He need not have waited until the Monday to find out, because on Saturday 8th, Punch Magazine published the John Tenniel cartoon, "Same Old Game!" Someone was very well informed indeed.................Same Old Game reveals the remarkable story of "The Baring Crisis of 1890"......
About the Author: I graduated from Nottingham University with an average degree in Mechanical Engineering, and in subsequent employment descended from the technical cutting edge of nuclear engineering through photographic products and finally to food manufacture, where I found my level of competence, an example of the Peter principle in reverse, perhaps! In the early eighties I started my own food production company, which proved ultimately successful, even if the start was a little shaky. The business was sold a few years later and with the words of my accountant still ringing in my ears, "no, you can't retire" and "don't spend all the money on a sports car business", I moved on. The classic sports car business and Ginetta Cars, were not a great financial success, for me at any rate, but interesting nevertheless. A spell in other people's sports car companies was instructive but also financially unrewarding, and to pay the bills I returned for a while to the food business. With at least some of those bills paid my wife and I reflected on the possibility of moving to Devon where I might mess about in boats and do what I always wanted to do - write. So we did and I have. I imagined that days would be spent in the sun on the boat tapping away at the lap-top, firing off occasional articles to boating, motoring and aviation magazines (learning to fly a helicopter was something else my accountant advised against), and banking the cheques. It didn't work out that way and anyway what I really wanted to do was write history. So I decided to write history by combining natural curiosity with the structure and analysis that I had acquired in a career of engineering and business. I now just needed some history to write - and I stumbled, almost literally, on the story behind "Merchants of War". Researching that book and its sequel, "Same Old Game!" has unearthed so many other stories that need to be pursued, that the quiet retirement is on-hold for the time being.....