It was the trading excesses of one person, Nick Leeson (the Rogue Trader) which brought down Barings Bank in 1995. It was the decision of the Board of one company, the Royal Bank of Scotland, to buy ABN-AMRO that sowed the seeds of its collapse and subsequent rescue by the UK government. And it was the collapse of another bank, Lehmann Brothers, in 2008 that triggered the financial tsunami, from which the world's economies have yet to recover.