Baring family

The Baring family's banking dynasty — which financed the Louisiana Purchase, dominated British finance for a century, survived near-collapse in 1890, and finally collapsed in 1995 when Nick Leeson lost $1.3B on derivatives.

Barings as the archetypal British merchant bank: at their height, the Barings were described by Richelieu as 'the sixth great power in Europe' — alongside Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. They financed the Louisiana Purchase (1803), multiple British government wars, and railway expansion globally. The 1890 Argentine crisis (Barings overexposed to Argentine sovereign debt) required a Bank of England orchestrated bailout — a precedent for too-big-to-fail rescues. The 1995 collapse (Nick Leeson's fraudulent derivatives trading on Barings' Singapore futures desk) ended 233 years of banking history and became the definitive case study in rogue trader risk management failure.