The two female City bankers who were suing Japanese investment bank Nomura for £3m after they claimed they were forced to resign by sexist bosses had their case dismissed yesterday.
The Central London Employment Tribunal said claims by Anna Francis and Maureen Murphy for unfair dismissal, race discrimination and sex discrimination were not well founded, reports Reuters.
Each woman was claiming £1.5m in compensation for loss of earnings and injury to feelings. They had claimed Nomura was institutionally racist and sexist.
In court documents, Murphy said a Nomura trader had made a comment that “women belonged at home cleaning floors” and had to deal with difficult clients, including one who had referred to a female banker’s breasts as “honkers”.
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But the tribunal found Francis and Murphy’s dismissal was in part due to downsizing by Nomura after it purchased parts of Lehman Brothers and also as a result of the financial crisis. The judge ruled that the selection criteria for redundancy was fair.
“We have not found that the claimant was subjected to the detriments of which she complains,” he said, in regard to Francis. “She has not proved facts from which we could infer that had she been a man, or Japanese, or both, that she would have been treated more favourably.”
