NICK Leeson, the trader who broke Barings Bank in February 1995, thought his managers at the merchant bank were "stupid" according to a BBC documentary to be aired today.

Leeson, sentenced to six and a half years in jail in Singapore last December for fraud, ran up almost $1.4 billion of losses in unauthorised derivatives trades by hiding his spiralling losses from his immediate superiors in London.

Mr Peter Norris, former chief executive of Barings, told the BBC. "It was like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. It is totally bizarre, how a group of rational, intelligent, competent people were totally at variance with reality," said Mr Norris.