More evidence in discrimination case

The sacked woman banker seeking £7.5 million from Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch described today how a colleague pressed his hand on her thigh during a business presentation while her boss looked on and did nothing.

Ausaf Abbas later joked about the incident to Stephanie Villalba, who claims he systematically humiliated her in her £1 million-a-year job.

At an employment tribunal today Mrs Villalba described the incident in Frankfurt last November when head of finance and investment banking David Jendran leant across her to speak to her boss. "He pressed his hand on my thigh while he was talking to Ausaf," she said. "It was obvious to Ausaf that David had his hand on my thigh. I was highly embarrassed. I could see that Ausaf could see but was doing nothing. I was pinned between the two of them and didn't feel there was anything I could do."

Later, at a cocktail party in Milan, she was complaining to Mr Abbas that she had found the incident "highly embarrassing and unpleasant" when another executive walked up and asked what they were talking about. To her further embarrassment Mr Abbas told him: "We were talking about David Jendran's 'wandering hands problem'."

She was so upset she walked away. Later that day Mr Abbas introduced her to colleagues as the "last of a long line of failed heads of Europe".

If Mrs Villalba wins her case for sex discrimination her cash award is likely to be the biggest ever in the City. Her case is that Mr Abbas could not accept her as a successful woman executive and embarked on a campaign of harassment.

Today she described an incident where they boarded a small executive jet for a meeting where she was ordered to sit in the stewardess's seat and serve drinks to six male colleagues.

Mrs Villalba said she expected to be sitting next to her boss in the larger seats but was directed to the small stewardess section, where she then had to serve drinks to the men. By the time she had finished there were none left for her and none of the men offered her their drinks. "I felt isolated, humiliated and undermined by Ausaf 's actions," she added.

Once she returned to London she felt compelled to go to human resources at Merrill Lynch and complain, despite feeling apprehensive. "I was feeling completely overwhelmed by Ausaf 's treatment of me and didn't know how to handle it," she said.

"I was aware that for people to make complaints was frowned upon in Merrill Lynch. For people who complained, it could mean the end of their careers. The attitude was that people who made complaints were trouble-makers, but I felt his behaviour towards me during the trip had been discriminatory and demeaning."

Mrs Villalba, sacked last year after 17 years, told today how things went wrong almost as soon as Mr Abbas was appointed her boss. "From the moment he met me he treated me as his assistant rather than as a manager," she said. When she tried to explain to him the workload was too great he replied aggressively: "Stephanie, my maid works hard."

"I felt extremely put down by his dismissive response," she said. The case, expected to last six weeks, continues.