Every year banks spend billions deploying sophisticated filtering and electronic "perimeter fence" technologies to try to maintain their security. Yet another more insidious threat lurks within banks' perimeter walls. While financial services providers have been busy fending off external threats, the incidence of internal fraud by employees has risen steadily. According to the 2008 "Report to the Nation on Occupational ...

France's very own Nick Leeson has been losing its second biggest bank billions of pounds. A trader at Société Générale has lost the bank £3.7bn through secret dealings, explains the Observer's deputy business editor Richard Wachman. • Subscribe free to Newsdesk, via iTunes ...

My friend Paddy has just sent me an email. "Some people will never learn," it says. Attached to the email is the story of Galway United Football Club. Galway, of the Eircom League, are in financial trouble. Everything has gone wrong in their second year back in Ireland's premier division. They increased the price of tickets from &#8364 ...

Governments and central banks do not understand markets, so it is "foolish" to trust them to resolve the current global financial crisis, former rogue trader Nick Leeson said on Tuesday. "The government didn't see it coming. The central bank didn't see it coming. And you have to ask yourself, why?" said Leeson, whose illicit trading brought down Barings ...