The NAB foreign currency option losses in the context of a disaster myopia model

In this paper the author develops a model that expands on the ‘disaster myopia’ analysis of Guttentag and Herring and provides an eight-stage process which incorporates the ‘availability heuristic’ of Tversky and Kahneman. The eight-stage disaster myopia process might be recognised as a model which encapsulates the key elements of serious bank loss experiences. The model is shown to be consistent in explaining the earlier bank loss experiences such as Barings Bank and Daiwa Bank. In this paper this model is applied to the recent National Australia Bank (NAB) losses in currency option trading and suggestions are made as to how it might be used to improve the processes of corporate governance that appear to be unable to recognise problems early enough.