PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Waiting for the bank to open Barings, Britain's oldest merchant bank, went bust after Mr Nick Leeson, a 28-year- old trader born in Watford, lost some £700 million in deals involving financial futures. Mr Eddie George, the Governor of the Bank of England, failed to find a buyer for Barings over the weekend and the bank went into administration. Mr Peter Baring, the chairman of the bank, hinted at a con- spiracy; Mr William Leeson, the father of the missing banker, told journalists to 'piss off. The pound fell against the German mark and the Tokyo stock market briefly took a knock of 4 per cent. Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, said in the Commons that he found 'distasteful' recent high pay- ments to directors and suchlike; he added that he would consider some kind of legis- lation to deal with the matter. Lord Wyatt was re-appointed as chairman of the Tote at £95,000 a year and the age of 76; Mr Tony Blair, the Leader of the Opposition, called it 'a favour too far'. The company that owned Dilions and Ryman's called in the receivers. Eight children were returned to their parents in Ayrshire five years after unfounded allegations of ritual abuse had
prompted social workers to take them away. The British boxer Nigel Benn suc- cessfully defended a world super-mid- dleweight title by knocking out the Ameri- can Gerald McClellan, who then had to have a blood clot removed from his brain. Victor Montagu, who disclaimed the Earldom of Sandwich after having sat, when he was Lord Hinchingbrooke, as a Member of Parliament in the Conserva- tive interest from 1941-62, died, aged 88. A retired gas-fitter died at the age of 93, just before the christening of his first child.
THE UNITED STATES made an agree- ment with China intended to curtail infringement of intellectual property; a trade war was thus averted. France accused some United States diplomats of spying, There was fighting between rival clans in Mogadishu as United Nations forces with- drew after two years. There was fighting to the east of Grozny as Russia continued its offensive against the secessionist region of Chechnya. A 14-year-old Christian boy and
his uncle were released on appeal after hav- ing been condemned to death for allegedly writing blasphemous words on the walls of a mosque. Sunni Muslims shot dead 20 Shia Muslims in a mosque in Karachi. A car bomb in northern Iraq killed 76. About 150 Colombian rebels killed eight Venezuelan soldiers on the border. There were renewed border clashes between Peru and Ecuador. Argentina cut the pay of its civil servants by up to 15 per cent to help meet a national deficit. Public employees in Washington DC had a compulsory unpaid day's leave to help meet a city deficit. Japan achieved record foreign exchange reserves of the equivalent of $125,900 million. Sir Geoffrey Henry, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, said it was 'a stinking lie' that he had issued letters of guarantee for more than his country would cover. The German union IG Metall went on strike in Bavaria. A Finnish professor has recorded some of Elvis Presley's hits in Latin, under such titles as Nunc hic aut numquam (Ws now or never'). More than 17,000 poussins roasted in a fire at a chicken-farm at
Maubeuge in northern France. CSH
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