Making sense of the collapse of Barings Bank

Abstract

We may usefully interrogate individual texts in order to expose them as exercises in power that serve hegemonic and legitimation functions. To illustrate this argument I analyse the account of the collapse of Barings Bank given in the Report of the Board of Banking Supervision, and juxtapose this with other versions of the events given by investigative journalists, Nicholas Leeson, and management scholars.The Report, I suggest, promulgates a public discourse myth designed to mitigate public anxieties, and is an explicit attempt to maintain and reproduce the legitimacy of the Bank of England, the City of London, and existing regulatory structures.