Risk Management for Finance Sector Enterprises Essay

Risk Management for Finance Sector Enterprises - Essay Example These risks affected the Bank after the merging of banking and securities business. The failure to manage these risks appropriately lasted to the collapse of the bank. â€Å"The failure of Barnings in early 1995 and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of large trading losses at Daiwa in New York in that year, as well as the more recent experiences of losses at Sumitomo, show that risk management must be made   to work in practice as well as theory†. The circumstances that led to the collapse of Barings bank are mainly the failure in managing the market risks. The power to manage the activities of the bank in Singapore has remained concentrated in the hands of Nick Leeson, who worked in the Singapore stock market and was able to deal from both sides. Leeson appointed only few staffs in his office at Singapore due to the fact that it will offer him the leeway for making the forgery. With this motive in mind, he projected a false impression of the market situation by th e use of cross-trade technique and created a profit of 50% during 1994. He started the forgery by creating to a false account and by the end of 1994 the actual state of affairs came into notice and the bank authorities realized that they have sustained a loss of â€Å"$296 million†.... financial sector enterprises may arise from variations in market prices, consisting of alternative volatilities, change in interest rates, product costs and foreign exchange rates. Generally, the higher the cost volatility in any marketplace the greater the possible markets risk. According to Richard J. Herring in his article called BCCI & Barings: Bank Resolutions Complicated by Fraud and Global Corporate Structure, talks about the Leeson’s intention of defrauding the bank. He says that his intention (Herring n.d.) has become successful mainly due to the lack of monitoring of the daily internal activities. The bank over relied on its staffs and gave them freedom which enabled Leeson to misappropriate the money. An internal assessment of the Bank would have prevented the possibility of manipulation and the subsequent collapse. Inadequate allocation of funds was another failure in managing the market risk and this encouraged Leeson to continue his corruption. Adequate hedging t he position was another market risk faced by the bank and it utterly failed in managing this risk. The position of Barings Bank in the stock market was also manipulated in the beginning of 1994, which prevented the bank from taking necessary action. The final market risk faced by the bank was the checking of the closing position and trading limits. The management of the dealings in stock market and of the dealing limits is an important function of a bank. However, the bank failed to manage this risk as Leeson controlled the activities of the bank in the stock market and the bank relied blindly on him. Thus, Barings Bank finally bore the brunt in terms of its eventual collapse. Due to the unsuccessful management of risks relating to internal controls, an employee of the bank was able to tamper