HSBC has lost an appeal against a court decision to reinstate a tribunal claim that alleged it discriminated against a candidate for a senior sales position.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the case of Carmen Chevalier-Firescu, who applied for work with the bank between 2018 and 2021, should now be remitted to a new tribunal to decide on the claim.
In September, Chevalier-Firescu discovered that she had been unsuccessful for one role, but continued to seek employment with the bank and failed to secure a job.
She claimed that the reason for her applications not proceeding was that she had previously sued Barclays Bank for sex discrimination, and this had impacted her job prospects with HSBC.
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Chevalier-Firescu won a significant settlement from Barclays after she had been made redundant during maternity leave.
She launched two tribunal claims against HSBC – one in November 2020 alleging race and sex discrimination and victimisation by a manager; and a second in May 2021 that she had been “blacklisted” by HSBC and had been given unfavourable “informal” references by her managers in the City.
Chevalier-Firescu claimed that she met with a colleague in September 2020, who told her that she had not been recruited by HSBC because “her old boss at Barclays” had passed on negative feedback.
She was also told she might struggle to get future employment because senior managers in derivatives across different banks – the area in which she worked – knew each other.
Her claim also alleges that a HSBC manager used sex-based stereotypes to describe her as a successful and assertive woman.
An open preliminary hearing in June 2021 ended up with her claims being struck out due to being out of time, but she pursued an appeal.
In February 2024, the Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the appeal on the grounds that the initial hearing had misdirected itself in law by striking out one of her claims because it had not even come to tribunal by the time of the preliminary hearing. It also found that her race discrimination claim had been brought in time.
In October this year, HSBC filed an appeal with the Court of Appeal to prevent the case from being remitted to a new tribunal, continuing to allege that Chevalier-Firescu had made her claims out of time, but this has been rejected.
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