THE BARINGS DEBACLE : Firm’s Sudden Fall Leaves London Bankers Speechless : Mood: Comment is scarce in the city’s financial district. Leeson is dismissed as archvillain.

Last weekend’s collapse of Barings appears to have this city’s venerable banking community under siege.

Few bankers or traders were taking telephone calls Wednesday, and few of the “suits” on the streets of “the City,” or financial district, during a sunny lunch hour were willing to talk about how the Barings catastrophe has shaken their world.

The 233-year-old Barings is housed in a modern glass high-rise with a marbled lobby and security guards to turn away the unwelcome. Men and women emerging from the headquarters walked quickly, their eyes fixed ahead.

The few banking and trade analysts who would speak focused more on the character of Barings than on Nicholas W. Leeson--the 28-year-old rogue trader blamed for the bank’s downfall. They tend to dismiss him as a “wild card” or just “one lunatic.” But Barings, they said--a name synonymous with stability, last year a healthy company with $87.5 million in profit--how could such a firm allow one young man so much power?

“It is normal for people to trade and take risky positions, but not to have no control over your operations area,” said one market analyst. “A 28-year-old normally would not be given a position to take the whole bank down.”

Leeson worked not in the bank, but in the thick of the boisterous, machismo, beat-the-odds trading arena, where only the tough survive past the age of 30.

Leeson’s humble origins--as the son of a plasterer from a public housing project in an unfashionable London suburb--is not unusual in trading here.

“A lot of traders come from that background--the East End barrow boys--because (traders) need to be aggressive,” said one City of London telecommunications engineer who requested anonymity because he does business with Barings.

“If you can get in when you’re young and show some flair, you get into the trade floors. And they’re at each other’s throats. To be successful, you have to be greedy to get ahead of the next guy,” he said.

Smiling, he added that he kind of liked it that a “barrow boy”--which means, literally, market boy--had done in part of the banking establishment. “I’m from that background myself,” he said.

His view apparently was shared by many working-class Londoners who said they would not shed a tear for a fallen bank.