HSBC Ex-Markets Chief Said to Have Left After Misconduct Claim
HSBC Ex-Markets Chief Said to Have Left After Misconduct Claim
(Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc’s head of global markets, Thibaut de Roux, left the bank after a junior female employee accused him of inappropriate conduct at a hotel bar in New York, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The London-based HSBC veteran allegedly behaved improperly with the employee, who flagged it to the lender’s human resources department in early summer, one of the people said. HSBC has reported the incident to the U.K. financial services regulator, the person said, declining to be identified because the details are private.
“An allegation was made against an individual,” HSBC said in a statement on Tuesday. “We dealt with it directly, robustly and appropriately.” De Roux didn’t return calls and texts to his U.K. mobile phone seeking comment.
The bank had announced in a memo to staff in mid-September that de Roux would be leaving the company and retiring from banking after 30 years in the industry.
Reported cases of alleged harassment have spread across business, including finance, building pressure on companies to step up their handling of misconduct claims. Earlier this year, UBS Group AG said it will set up a confidential hotline for employees to flag sexual misconduct complaints, while Credit Suisse Group AG also put in place new disciplinary procedures to tackle incidents of sexual harassment.
The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority’s Megan Butler told Bloomberg last month that some industry claims of misconduct are increasingly being escalated to her. Butler, executive director of supervision for investment, wholesale and specialists at the FCA, said financial institutions are still unclear on which incidents should be investigated, which is prompting anxiety among management.
The FCA declined to comment on the HSBC matter.
De Roux joined HSBC in 1990 and held a number of senior roles in trading. He has also served as a board director of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, an industry body.
--With assistance from Nishant Kumar and Thomas Beardsworth.
To contact the reporters on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net;Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elisa Martinuzzi at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net, Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam
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