The dark history of money, greed & collapse
Going Concerned
Frauds, failures and bad incentives — and the patterns repeating right now
Barings Bank 1995 ·
Enron 2001 ·
WorldCom 2002 ·
Parmalat 2003 ·
Lehman Brothers 2008 ·
Bernie Madoff 2008 ·
MF Global 2011 ·
Tesco Scandal 2014 ·
Wirecard 2020 ·
Greensill Capital 2021 ·
Silicon Valley Bank 2023 ·
Barings Bank 1995 ·
Enron 2001 ·
WorldCom 2002 ·
Parmalat 2003 ·
Lehman Brothers 2008 ·
Bernie Madoff 2008 ·
MF Global 2011 ·
Tesco Scandal 2014 ·
Wirecard 2020 ·
Greensill Capital 2021 ·
FTX 2022 ·
Silicon Valley Bank 2023 ·
This week’s edition
The man who hid £827 million from a bank that trusted everyone
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The dark history of money — frauds, collapses, and catastrophic decisions that shaped the financial world, and the patterns repeating right now.
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From the archive
Corporate Fraud
The accountants who couldn’t see Parmalat’s missing €3.9 billion
Italy’s largest dairy company hid its debts in a Cayman Islands account that didn’t exist. For eleven years, nobody checked.
Rogue Trader
Société Générale and the €4.9bn bet Jérôme Kerviel hid in plain sight
He knew the back-office controls because he’d designed them. Then he found every gap. It took three years before anyone looked properly.
Political Economy
How Iceland’s three banks borrowed twelve times the country’s GDP — and why everyone let them
In 2008, Iceland’s banking system collapsed faster than any in history. The warning signs had been there for years.
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