March 2008. Bear Stearns, a Wall Street powerhouse, collapsed in a matter of days as funding dried up and confidence evaporated. Its sudden fall was the first domino of the financial crisis, teaching us how fragile liquidity and reputation can be.
2008: When Lehman fell, the world turned its eyes to AIG — an insurer that had quietly written billions in guarantees on toxic mortgage securities. Collateral calls crushed it, and only a government rescue kept the global system from collapse.
2008. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Behind the headlines was a toxic mix of leverage, subprime mortgages, and misplaced confidence. This is how a Wall Street giant fell.
1998 – A hedge fund run by Nobel laureates promised to tame risk with math. For four years, it worked—until Russia defaulted and the models crumbled. Long-Term Capital Management nearly pulled the entire financial system into the abyss.
London, 1995. One man, a single trading desk, and unchecked ambition. This is the story of Nick Leeson — the trader who hid losses in the shadows until they consumed Barings Bank, a 233-year-old institution.
Cologne 1974: one overnight timing gap between currencies, and a bank simply disappeared. Welcome to the story behind *settlement risk*— how it earned its name, and why I still feel its chill today.
I am a risk manager in a world where fortunes are made before lunch and lost before dinner. My job isn’t to stop risks — it’s to wrestle with them long enough to keep the bank alive for one more day. In this diary, I’ll take you behind the glass doors of the trading floor, where market crashes, rogue traders, and midnight phone calls aren’t history lessons, but daily battles. Welcome to The Risk Manager’s Diary — a world where every decision is a coin toss between survival and disaster.
