I Became the Youngest Daughter of a Chaebol Family-Chapter 67: Collapse of the Soviet Union (5)

After a brief wave of anxiety, Leeson swallowed his fears and used the same words to convince both his staff and himself.

“Alright, let’s up our position while the premiums are high! Contact HQ—show them the profits we made from futures and push for expansion!”

Yeah, yeah, this is fine. I just need to get through this one. Just this one time... Sure, the straddle position’s screwed, but the CDS contracts are safe unless there’s a full default. I just need to ride this one out...!

Leeson forced himself to focus on the TV.

Soon, a broadcast aired showing Yeltsin speaking in front of the Soviet parliament building.

“Citizens of Russia, on the nights of August 18th and 19th, 1991, the lawfully elected President Gorbachev was removed from office. Regardless of the reasons, what we face now is an illegitimate coup. Despite all the hardships and trials we’ve endured, the process of democratization in our country continues to move forward—and it can no longer be stopped by anyone.”

Then came a rush of exhilarating updates: the coup plotters had failed to mobilize military forces, and even the Russian Orthodox Church—a major political entity, despite the communists’ hatred of religion—had expressed support for Yeltsin.

It was obvious: the coup was falling apart.

Leeson clapped his hands in delight.

“Yes! Hahaha! I knew it!”

No time to waste. He had to start buying CDS contracts again and take a long position while the chaos still lingered.

Normally, he’d have played it safe with option-selling strategies—but this was a bull market. And if there was one thing Nick Leeson knew, it was that when everyone’s panicking, that’s when you buy.

Click.

—Ring-ring!

The phone rang. HQ was calling.

“Nick Leeson speaking.”

—“Just checking in, Mr. Leeson. We’ve received a directive from HQ: no further position expansions for the time being.”

“What? Ah, yes, of course! Naturally! I mean, who am I, right? Just the top trader at Barings Bank! Good ol’ Nick Leeson!”

Click.

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

As he hung up, his face twisted in frustration, and he muttered a curse.

“Goddamn it. What’s so scary about risk that’s already been baked in...”

No way around it. He wouldn’t be able to expand his positions officially. So he had to pivot to the side they didn’t know about: the derivatives he was running off the books.

“Alright, I’ll just keep scooping from below with simple 3x leverage. That should be fine.”

***

Any normal person would’ve screamed if they knew what he was plotting. But for Nick Leeson, it was just another Tuesday. He sighed and checked the margin calls due the next day—there was a chance he wouldn’t have enough to cover them.

Most financial institutions don’t usually stress about margin calls. But Leeson had pulled so many stunts and scraped together capital from so many shady corners that even that wasn’t guaranteed.

“Hey, you—bring the ledger over. Yeah, yeah, don’t open {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} it, it’s confidential.”

He felt a flicker of guilt under the concerned gaze of the junior employee—but that disappeared the moment he saw the numbers.

Like most finance people, Leeson’s conscience was lighter than a single sheet of paper.

“...Okay, and today I’ll head home early.”

“Huh? Oh—right, sir!”

As salarymen uninterested in foreign politics, the rest of the office clocked out in a hurry.

Nick Leeson was now alone—effectively declaring himself the sole captain of the Singapore branch.

Sure, some staff were suspicious. A few were even ready to bail before shit hit the fan. But it didn’t matter.

Could he really handle all this by himself?

Leeson had asked himself the same thing. But the truth was, he didn’t have a choice.

He was certain: not a single soul would back him if they actually understood the scale of his insanity.

.

.

.

And so the Singapore office emptied out for the night.

Nick Leeson took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.

“Alright. This is an opportunity. An opportunity...”

Now that he’d pushed up the quitting time, he didn’t have to worry about people watching him in the evenings.

Sure, he’d eaten a massive loss from that straddle position, but that was fine. If he could just get more capital from HQ, he’d cover it in no time.

Just win it back.

...He just needed to hide it for a little while.

He was catastrophically addicted to the “88888” account, but no one could stop him. All the watchdogs had been muscled out by the so-called greatest investor of all time.

“Still worried about margin, though.”

Maintaining this kind of position was batshit insane.

But Nick Leeson, like all great fraudsters, approached the madness with his own warped sense of logic.

“There’s got to be a safer way... Oh! Right—that thing!”

It was still totally insane from an outside perspective.

“Haha! That’s it! I’ll just ask HQ for more money!”

With a booming laugh that masked his anxiety, he sprinted to the bank.

The fading sunset lit the path ahead of him.

At Singapore Citibank, a teller recognized him the moment he walked in.

“Ah! Mr. Leeson? What brings you in today? Can we help with something?”

“Withdraw everything. All of it.”

Leeson smiled kindly as he put heavy emphasis on that final word.

“E-everything? Ah, yes... right away.”

The staffer looked puzzled but didn’t resist. After all, Nick Leeson was famously eccentric and wildly successful.

Taking out the full $50 million HQ had entrusted him with, Leeson carried it straight to SIMEX.

“Here’s the margin payment! Hahaha, I’ve been a little late with margin lately, and I felt bad. So I brought it all at once. Though... next month, I might be a tiny bit late. Let’s not be petty, alright?”

—Honk honk!

Driving around chaotic Singapore traffic, Leeson eventually returned to the office. Walking through the dark halls, he let out a heavy sigh.

“Phew... Just this one time. I just need to survive this one...”

Rustle rustle.

Gathering a new pile of documents, he adjusted a few numbers.

The balance in Citibank was, of course, zero. He’d just withdrawn it.

But Leeson saw it differently.

“I mean, I’m gonna refill it anyway... So really, it’s just a relocation. If I haven’t lost the money, then the margin’s not really used up.”

So maybe it was okay to report to HQ that the money was still safely stored in Citibank?

He had merely made a small “location transfer” from Citibank’s vault to SIMEX’s vault. Sure, $50 million wasn’t exactly a “small” amount, but...

Money is all relative, right? In this glorious war where millions changed hands daily, was $50 million really such a big deal?

“Fifty million bucks is a huge sum. I have to skim it off somehow. If I can manage that here, I can keep the position and make a profit!”

It was Orwellian doublethink of the highest order. The USSR might’ve been on its last legs, but its legacy had found a fine new home—in one of the world’s most fanatical capitalists.

And then a few months passed...

[December 26, 1991 – Declaration No. 142-N on the Formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)]

In accordance with the will of the highest state authorities of the Republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine...

The Supreme Soviet of the USSR confirms that the Soviet Union shall cease to exist as a state and as a subject of international law.

The Soviet Union was dead.

And once again, Nick Leeson had predicted it all—one step ahead of even the regressors.

Now, $50 million had become... a minor detail.