A rogue trader who lost close to a billion pounds went head to head with an entrepreneur at a speaking event in Tunbridge Wells this month.

Over 100 guests converged at Solomons Estate near Tunbridge Wells for the Billion Pound Gamble.

The event, which was hosted by Markerstudy Leisure, put rogue trader Nick Leeson head to head with entrepreneur Peter Cullum who has built an insurance empire worth close to a billion pounds.

Fergus Ross, Markerstudy Leisure’s head of marketing, acted as compère. He opened proceedings by asking: “What do we know of these early billionaires? They had a knack for the ‘next big thing’ and an ability to ‘keep’ their fortunes.”

It was then time for the speakers to have their say. The first guest, Peter Cullum CBE, was honoured after amassing a personal fortune of almost a billion pounds building an insurance empire, Towergate.

He started with a career in insurance, but surprisingly late turned entrepreneur and very quickly built up a fortune. When asked about taking risks, he said: “If you don’t take any risks then don’t get up in the morning. Life is about risk, and part of that is understanding the risk and being able to measure it – you can never eliminate it.”

“When money becomes your God you lose it. All money does – and I tell my children this – is gives you choices, it never buys you happiness.”

The second speaker was Nick Leeson who famously brought down Barings, the UK’s oldest merchant bank.

He started work in the City in the late 1980s, the era of the Big Bang, when financial markets were being deregulated. Leeson was jailed for fraud in 1995 after losing close to a billion pounds on stock market gambling.

He said: “It was great and illuminating listening to Peter earlier and when it came to risks I didn’t really understand it, and I was surrounded by a lot of other people who didn’t really understand it as well.

"The thing was probably the more risk I took on the less I understood it, the less I was trying to evaluate it, and that’s why I got myself in quite as deep as I did during that period.”

“I was very successful and success was the thing that I wanted. It wasn’t the lure of money, it wasn’t really ego or greed – those were component parts. Success was really the thing that drove me along."