Whether he's applying for a bank loan or just making one of his frequent appearances on the after-dinner speech circuit, Nick Leeson is a man who attracts high interest rates these days.
So there was a predictably big attendance at the Trinity College Philosophical Society last night to hear in person from the original rogue trader the story of how he broke Barings Bank.
Four years out of jail and still recovering from the colon cancer that secured his early freedom, Leeson's main role in life now is as a cautionary tale for financial institutions everywhere.
A caution still much needed, he believes. The first thing he got in the post after his prison release was an offer of a credit card.
"If that's not irresponsible banking, I don't know what is," he joked.
More seriously, he argued that for all the stricter controls his case inspired, the prerogative of traders to make money will always see rules bent. Those who police the traders occupy the "less glamorous roles" in banking, as he puts it, and are often "not up to the mark".
There was a "98 per cent correlation" between AIB's Allfirst debacle and Barings, "The only difference is AIB could withstand the loss and Barings couldn't," said Leeson. But he insisted it is a mistake to describe either fraud as devious and complex. "They may have been devious, but they were not complex. They were very, very simple, and anybody could have exposed them."
Contrary to rumour, he did not find God in prison. But he did lose his wife while he was there, and described the nine months preceding their divorce as an experience worse than jail in Singapore or the last weeks of his career with Barings.
He now lives under a £100 million injunction imposed at the behest of the liquidators. But the injunction is "more of a controlling mechanism" than an attempt to recoup the losses, although half of everything he has is supposed to go to the creditors.
His book and its film rights apart, he makes a living now from public speaking. And although he concedes it would be "a brave organisation that would take me on", he doesn't rule out a future role helping banks avoid problems like him.
