SME adviser links up with ex-rogue trader Leeson 'to save firms from Covid disaster'

Business advisory firm GDP Partnership has linked up with Nick Leeson to form the 'pandemic recovery team'

Former trader Nick Leeson served four years in prison in Singapore for his loss-making €1bn trades that in 1995 destroyed the 233-year-old Barings Bank. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Business advisory firm GDP Partnership has linked up with Nick Leeson, the former rogue trader, with the aim of saving scores of firms, as it warns about a flood of insolvencies from the unfolding Covid-19 economic crisis. 

Mr Leeson, who has lived in Galway for almost two decades, will link up with the all-Ireland GDP Partnership to advise small firms through this crisis. 

Mr Leeson served four years in prison in Singapore for his loss-making €1bn trades in Japanese stock futures and bonds that in 1995 destroyed the 233-year-old Barings Bank. 

Since then, he had run the commercial management of Galway United FC, been active on the international business talk circuit, and, more recently, established trading firm Bull and Bear Capital.

Conor Devine, co-founder of GDP Partnership, said his group would help firms 12 months into the Covid "disaster" to survive the crisis when Government support comes to an end.

Mr Devine, who set up GDP Partnership during the last economic crisis in 2010, is calling GDP Partnership's link with Mr Leeson the "pandemic recovery team". He said:  

“Up until now, we have seen some of the pain being insulated for many business owners given the vast amount of Government financial support.  

"However, since the turn of the year, we’ve been contacted by more and more businesses that are starting to fail."