Eventually Barings was snapped up by Dutch group ING – renamed ING Barings in memoriam to the passing of a chunk of British history.A rather more laudable struggle continues to this day and is being fought by the hundreds of bondholders, who in many cases had entrusted their life savings to Barings. Theirs has been a four-and-a half-year saga of unrelenting disappointment which has so far yielded little or nothing of the pounds 100m they lost when Barings collapsed.And then there is Leeson himself, who is due to be released on Saturday after his four-year sojourn in Singapore’s Changi prison. Among his former superiors, heads have rolled and reputations been besmirched, but there was never any question where the buck would stop. After his attempts to escape to British justice, Leeson returned to Singapore via Frankfurt in 1995 to receive an exemplary six-and-a half-year jail sentence. Good behaviour has earned him an early release but colonic cancer clouds a future that he must face without Lisa, who has since left him and remarried.If Leeson has developed a taste for literature in prison, as many inmates do, he may have alighted on the works of Thomas Hardy to make some sense of the “whirligig” his life had become. Like Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Leeson’s ambition and single-mindedness drove him to unexpected heights. But it was the flipside of these qualities, pride and stubborness, which caused his downfall.Still, the film studios will be queueing up to make the follow-ups and the supporting cast will come to the fore.Peter BaringThe Baring scion joined the family bank in 1959 and rose smoothly through the ranks to the chairmanship until his brilliant career was rudely interrupted by Leeson’s antics.Although he was cleared of responsibility for the bank’s flop, Baring never recovered from the scathing reviews that greeted his performance as lead foil to the rogue trader.

Now 63, he has since followed the critics’ advice and retired from the City.Andrew TuckeyAs deputy chairman, Tuckey was Peter Baring’s understudy and took a similar amount of flak for his role in the debacle. However, he has since tried to revive his career as far as is possible within the confines of a curriculum vitae that includes this performance. He now works as a senior adviser to DLJ Phoenix, the American investment bank.Ron BakerOf all the main players, Baker was the one most adamant in his refusal to take his roasting lying down. Leeson’s immediate boss at the time of the collapse fought a three-year battle for the pounds 880,000 bonus he claims was his based on alleged verbal assurances from Tuckey. Unfortunately, Oxford Crown Court decided otherwise last year and Baker’s subsequent career has failed to match the heady days at Barings.Nick RitblatThe son of property tycoon John, Nick Ritblat has always refused to reveal the scale of the losses he incurred by backing the Barings flop.Most galling for Nick, who also sits on the board of British Land, he invested in the project just nine months before the bank’s collapse. He has become a figurehead for the other out-of-pocket investors as the battle for compensation continues.Eddie GeorgeCast as a rather unlikely white knight, the portly George was Governor of the Bank of England, whose efforts to rally round City bigwigs to the task of rescuing Barings earned widespread criticism.Unlike his then-deputy Rupert Pennant-Rea, who resigned a month later after the revelation of an affair with a journalist, George has never looked back. He remains in his post and has earned plaudits for his role in “Steady Eddie the Inflation-Buster”.Lisa LeesonNick’s romantic lead was the great discovery of the Barings epic, but she has chosen not to capitalise on her undoubted box-office appeal.

Praised for her unflinching devotion to the story’s anti-hero, Lisa eventually tired of living in the shadow of her first great role.She and Nick divorced and she has chosen a rather less high-profile City banker as her new husband.. We wish to make it clear that the article in the City and Business section of the 20 June edition of The Independent on Sunday headed “Save the City from Sex insanity”, written by Peter Koenig, contained allegations in relation to Sir William Douglas which were wholly untrue. Sir William Douglas is the former Chief Justice of Barbados and Barbadian High Commissioner to London. He has never been the chairman of Ocean Fund International, nor has he ever had any association with that organisation nor any of the other organisations or persons named in the article. We accept that the article so far as it related to and attributed statements to Sir William Douglas was incorrect and unfounded.
We apologise unreservedly for these errors and for any distress and embarrassment caused to Sir William..

SHEIKH Fahad Al-Sabah – the member of Kuwait’s royal family caught in a web of financial intrigue – plans to appeal against last week’s High Court ruling which found him party to the misappropriation of $900m (pounds 560m) from the Kuwait Investment Office, writes Peter Koenig. The ruling, handed down by Justice Mance of London’s Commercial Court, found Sheikh Fahad guilty of participating in a conspiracy to spirit funds out of the KIO’s Spanish subsidiary, Grupo Torras. It held the Sheikh liable for damages of almost $500m.
Sheikh Fahad, who now lives in the Bahamas, said he would fight the ruling on a variety of grounds. He declared on Friday: “This case is part of a witch-hunt by people who do not have Kuwait’s best interests at heart .. This case is about international politics. I am proud of what I did and the part I played in the liberation of Kuwait.”Sheikh Fahad’s defence is that the money in question was given to countries and leaders, including Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, in return for support for Kuwait after Iraq’s invasion of the country in 1990.Founded in 1982, and a power in the City between then and the 1991 Gulf War, the KIO enjoyed considerable autonomy under the chairmanship of Sheikh Fahad until his resignation when Grupo Torras went into receivership.Fouad Jaffar, the former managing director of the KIO in London, was also found guilty of dishonestly receiving money He will not appeal against the decision..