A former high-flying ANZ trader has been grilled over a series of ‘offensive’ and ‘inappropriate’ messages he sent to colleagues before being sacked by the bank.
Etienne Alexiou’s unfair dismissal case against the bank has finally begun more than a decade after he was sacked as its global head of balance sheet trading in 2015.
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Mr Alexiou alleges he was fired as a whistleblower for trading misconduct at the bank, while ANZ cites a series of offensive messages as the grounds for his dismissal.
In Federal Court on Monday, he was confronted by the bank’s lawyer, Kate Morgan SC, about a number of such messages, as reported by The Australian.
Mr Alexiou once bragged about sleeping with a Home and Away star after a colleague asked him about the ‘oldest bird you have shagged’, the court heard.
‘Do you accept now that this chat is offensive and disrespectful to women?’ Ms Morgan asked the trader.
‘Yes,’ Mr Alexiou said.
He was also confronted with messages in which he joked about the awkwardness of asking his family GP for Viagra to use with someone other than his wife.
Former high-flying ANZ trader Etienne Alexiou (pictured) was grilled over a series of messages to his former colleagues in Federal Court during his unfair dismissal case against the bank
‘To talk about your wife in that way is worse than offensive, isn’t it?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, agreeing he should not have said it.
He told the court several of his messages were satirical and that he was caricaturing the way bankers are reputed to behave.
Among them was one message in which he told a colleague: ‘I’m so sick of swigging dom (Dom Pérignon champagne) out of the bottle at strip clubs anyway’.
Mr Alexiou admitted that many of the messages he had sent were ‘inappropriate’ and ‘offensive’.
Mr Alexiou, who now serves as a director for private equity firm Belay Capital, has been locked in an on-and-off legal battle with ANZ for a decade.
His unfair dismissal case has long been anticipated to lift the lid on the bank’s internal handling of a damaging rate-rigging scandal.
Mr Alexiou alleges he was fired after blowing the whistle on misconduct by traders at the bank relating to the bank bill swap rate (BBSW), for which it paid a penalty of a reported $50million.
ASIC chair Joe Longo (pictured) slammed the bank for its ‘unacceptable disregard’ of customer trust in the wake of a separate regulatory crackdown
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) alleged the misconduct began in 2011 and began investigating it the following year.
ANZ settled with ASIC for a reported $50million after the corporate watchdog launched proceedings and committed to a legally binding promise not to do it again.
Mr Alexiou also confirmed in court he had been given a verbal warning by his bosses at the bank after he ‘behaved inappropriately’ and kissed another employee at a client function in December 2013.
The veteran trader also admitted he had not read the bank’s code of conduct policies in full and was separately grilled over his interactions with ASIC during its investigation of the alleged BBSW manipulation.
He denied ever misleading the corporate watchdog.
It comes at a shaky time for the banking giant, just weeks after it was hit with a record $240million fine for ‘widespread misconduct’ affecting almost 650,000 customers.
That regulatory crackdown saw ANZ admit to making false and misleading statements about its savings interest rates and failing to pay that amount to customers, as well as failing to respond to hundreds of customer hardship notices.
ASIC chair Joe Longo said the outcome showed an ‘unacceptable disregard’ for the trust of customers and government and a repeated ‘betrayal’ of Australians.
Mr Alexiou’s case against ANZ is ongoing and is expected to last six weeks.
Daily Mail has contacted Mr Alexiou and ANZ for comment.
