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Sangster: Lehman Brothers finds his |
Lehman Brothers found itself at the centre of embarrassing public revelations last month when a chef formerly employed by the bank challenged the terms of his dismissal and implied that loose morals were inherent to the firm’s culture.
Lehman, which is one of the more straight-laced institutions in the City of London, sacked Bruce Sangster from his position as head chef at its Broadgate office in January 2002 on the grounds that he had been sending pornographic images over the firm’s email system.
But during a three-day employment tribunal, Sangster, who lost his £14,000 bonus as well as his £57,000-a-year job, claimed that he had been treated unfairly.
He says chefs are a boisterous bunch who are more likely to find such emails funny than offensive, and in any case he didn’t know it was a sackable offence.
Not so, says the bank, which points out that it has extensive and strict rules on the use of its technology and a zero-tolerance attitude to its misuse.
As a nine-year veteran of the firm, Sangster should have been aware of company policy, Lehman said.
But the hearing took a twist when Sangster implied that low moral standards were part of the bank’s corporate culture.
During the hearing, he described how, on his first day in the role of executive chef at the bank, which was also his birthday, the firm had hired strippers.
“The day before, the lads in the kitchen said someone was coming in to see me from the Milk Marketing Board,” he said. “At about 11.30am, I observed a lady coming into the kitchen. She opened her front and said ‘happy birthday’. When I looked up there were about 20 people observing. They were laughing and giggling and [my boss] was among them.”
Lehman Brothers is certainly not laughing and giggling now, especially as it was only first made aware of these stripper allegations during the tribunal hearing.
A Lehman spokesman says: “Nobody outside the kitchen staff was aware of this alleged incident. The point is that hiring a stripper would not have been conduct tolerated by the firm, then or now. It’s just common sense. We definitely do not have double or relaxed standards.”
At the time of going to press, Lehman does not wish to comment on the case. The tribunal is due to announce its judgement soon. We’ll follow the story at www.euromoney.com.
