Colleague grabbed my thigh - banker

A WOMAN banker sacked from her £1m-a-year-job told how she was left humiliated by her sexist boss after a male colleague grabbed her thigh.

Stephanie Villalba, 42, claims that when she complained about the touching incident, her boss embarrassed her by joking about it with a male colleague.

She told an industrial tribunal yesterday that there was a culture within Merrill Lynch that victimised staff who complained about unfair treatment.

The mother of three is suing the US investment bank for a record £7.5m compensation, alleging sex discrimination, victimisation, unfair dismissal and unequal pay.

She lost her job as London-based head of private client banking in Europe in July 2003 after a 17-year career with the bank.

The only woman to have been appointed to the board of directors, she was responsible for generating annual revenues of more than £50m. Villalba, who shares a £4.5m house in Belgravia with her Italian banker husband, told Croydon employment tribunal how she had been a valued manager until the arrival of her new boss, Ausaf Abbas, in October 2002.

The following month, she attended a business lecture with Abbas in Frankfurt where David Gendron, an investment banking chief, leant across her to speak to Abbas.

She said: 'David Gendron pressed his hand on my thigh while he was talking. It was plainly obvious to Ausaf. Ausaf carried on talking. I was highly embarrassed.'

She said that 'ordinarily when this sort of thing happens to me I move out of the way' but she couldn't because the three of them were in the front row of the audience and the speaker had begun his lecture. 'I was pinned between them and I could not disrupt the meeting.'

Villalba said the following day, at a lunch for 20 male executives in Milan, she told Abbas the fondling incident had been embarrassing and unpleasant, but he thought it funny.

When another executive asked them what they were talking about, Abbas had told him and laughed about Gendron's 'wandering hand problem'.

'I was extremely embarrassed that he was joking about this with other people,' said Villalba.

She said that on an executive jet from Frankfurt to Milan, Abbas had treated her like an air stewardess and ordered her to serve drinks to the men.

'I felt isolated, humiliated and undermined by Ausaf's actions,' she said.

During the trip she was continually undermined by her boss, who, in a meeting in Italy, referred to her as 'the last of a long line of failed heads of Europe', she alleged. 'I was taken aback,' she said. 'He was sidelining me right in front of my face.'

She claimed that when she raised concerns over her teams' workload, Abbas 'responded by saying very aggressively: Stephanie, my maid works hard'.

'His dismissive response was that of a man brushing aside trivial complaints from his wife or a junior employee, rather than a senior executive discussing important concerns with an equal.'

She said she was afraid to complain about her treatment. ' I was aware that when other employees had complained, that had effectively ended their careers. The attitude within Merrill Lynch was that individuals who made complaints were troublemakers.'

However, she eventually made her feelings known to the company's human resources department.

The tribunal has already heard Villalba's counsel say that Merrill Lynch was 'institutionally sexist'.

The bank denies the allegations, saying Villalba was not up to the job.

The hearing continues.