ABN Amro Lawyer’s Unfair Firing Ruled Not Due to Race

A London employment tribunal ruled that a former U.K. lawyer at ABN Amro Group NV was unfairly fired by the bank even as it rejected claims she was discriminated against because of her race, gender or religion.

ABN Amro’s former U.K. head of legal, Angela Cobbina, 41, who is black, sued the Dutch lender saying she was subjected to racial discrimination by an executive, Paul Schuilwerve, who said he couldn’t see her in a photograph.

Tribunal judges dismissed the discrimination aspects of the lawsuit today, while saying that her dismissal in September wasn’t fair. They didn’t provide a written ruling or reasons for the decision.

“We are pleased the judgment supports our strong belief that the various allegations of discrimination on grounds of sex, race and religion were entirely groundless,” said Alex Evans, a spokesman for ABN Amro.

U.K. tribunals normally cap damages at about 70,000 pounds ($117,000), except in cases where employees were discriminated against.

“Throughout these legal proceedings the bank maintained that it did nothing wrong,” said Cobbina’s lawyer, Emma Sanderson, in an e-mailed statement. “The tribunal disagreed.”

The bank handled Cobbina’s dismissal in a way that was “unfair and unlawful,” she said.
Question of Procedure

The tribunal upheld only one of the more than 40 allegations filed by Cobbina, Evans said. “While we don’t have the tribunal’s reasons, we expect it to be merely a question of procedure,” he said.

Schuilwerve, the former chief executive officer of the bank’s U.K. unit, testified on March 3 that the comments he made about photos and the color black weren’t intended as racist. Cobbina had told the court that Schuilwerve said he couldn’t see her in a photograph and made comments about Blackfriars, an area of central London, in which he also mentioned Blackadder, a television comedy.

The racism allegations were unfair and “deeply hurtful,” he said.

“I always believed that I had been treated unfairly by ABN Amro and the decision of the tribunal has endorsed that belief,” Cobbina said in an e-mail.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kit Chellel in London at cchellel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net Lindsay Fortado 

 

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