A former Citigroup currencies trader won his case for unfair dismissal on Tuesday. A London employment tribunal decided that Perry Stimpson was unfairly dismissed by the U.S. bank last year when it was mired in a forex scandal.
Part of the tribunal’s reasoning is peculiar: it seems to conclude that Stimpson shouldn’t have been sacked because he was behaving no differently from his colleagues – in this case betraying client secrets.
The ruling states that “the claimant believed that he was not breaching his duties of confidentiality in large part due to the way in which he saw his peers and immediate managers behave,” reports the Financial Times. (paywall).
So if everyone’s doing something dodgy, it’s okay if I do it too? Alternatively, why didn’t Citi fire those “peers and immediate managers”?
Photo: Herve Boinay