Trust us... forget the balls-ups

The University of Central England Birmingham sought internal auditing advice from legendary fraudster Nick Leeson last week. The former money market trader whose covert activities led to the collapse of Barings Bank with losses of £860 million was a speaker at a conference on auditing run by the Business School. In his speech, he looked at the risks to which financial institutions in particular can be exposed and how internal auditing systems can minimise the possibility of losses such as those he incurred occurring again.

Gerald Ratner, the man whose £120 million jewellery empire crumbled when he publicly described some of the products on sale in his stores as "total crap", was also on hand to enlighten participants.