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A former senior lawyer at BNP Paribas has been ordered to pay £31,000 after admitting to creating and using “offensive” nicknames for colleagues while working at the French bank’s London office.
Benedict Foster, former head of legal for debt and equity capital markets at BNP Paribas in London, was fined £15,000 and directed to pay costs of £16,000 at a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal on Tuesday.
At the hearing, Foster admitted to creating and using “unprofessional” and “offensive” monikers for colleagues and using “inappropriate language in the workplace”.
This included using the nickname “Hu She” in email correspondence on 12 occasions to refer to an east Asian colleague and referring to the same woman as the “global head of bag-carrying”, according to a statement of agreed facts and breaches submitted to the tribunal.
Foster accepted that the use of “Hu She” could “be interpreted as mocking or ridiculing a traditional Chinese name”, the document shows. His lawyer told the hearing that there was “never any racist intent whatsoever” in the comment, while Foster said the nickname was based on the “Who He?” joke from Private Eye magazine.
Foster also referred in emails to senior colleagues at the bank as “cunts” and questioned whether another person was “autistic”. The SRA said Foster did not use the slurs when communicating directly with the people in question, apart from one individual whom he referred to as “Mad Paul” on several occasions.
The monetary penalty underlines how professional regulators in the UK are seeking to use their powers to crack down on non-financial misconduct in the workplace. The tribunal has the power to suspend and strike off solicitors in the UK, but decided against taking such action against Foster.
Foster admitted to breaching several of the SRA’s “principles”, including acting with integrity and acting in a way that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion.
The SRA said some other nicknames used by Foster in emails to apparently refer to colleagues included: “Biryani, Pol Pot, the Black Swan, the Entry Point, Dr No, Boomerang Jack, Phil Bennet/the Idiot, Jabba the Hutt, the Twittering Fool and Les Miserables.”
The case comes after another former BNP Paribas employee in London was awarded £2mn in 2022 — one of the largest awards made by a UK employment tribunal at the time — after judges ruled in a separate case that the French bank unfairly discriminated against her because of her gender.
After a complaint against Foster in late 2021, BNP Paribas conducted an internal disciplinary process into the solicitor. The outcome of that probe was to retain Foster and not report the allegations to the SRA, the hearing was told.
However, the bank later reported Foster’s comments to the regulator in March 2022 after the remarks were publicly reported in January of that year. The bank “negotiated an exit” with Foster who left in March 2022, the document shows.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Jonathan Page, a barrister representing Foster, said: “Through me, [Foster] wishes to apologise and does so unreservedly . . . [he] never intended any offence and never intended to hurt anyone.”
Page also noted that Foster’s remarks were sent between 2020 and 2021 during the Covid pandemic, which was a “very stressful time” when people were “by and large working from home”. He added that BNP Paribas was also integrating a new IT system at the time that “caused stress”.
BNP Paribas, the SRA and a lawyer representing Foster declined to comment.
