A City lawyer has been fined £31,000 for calling his colleagues “rude” names — including “Pol Pot”, “Mad Paul” and “Jabba the Hutt” — almost entirely without their knowledge. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that the senior solicitor failed to act in a way that “encourages diversity, equity and inclusion”. The Telegraph has the story.
Benedict Foster, a former senior solicitor in BNP Paribas’ London offices, was charged £15,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and told to pay an extra £16,000 in costs after admitting to using “inappropriate” language in the workplace.
In submissions to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), the City lawyer admitted using an array of “offensive” monikers to describe his work colleagues at the French bank, including “Mad Paul” and “the Twittering Fool”, while working as head of legal in its debt and equity capital markets division between December 2020 and September 2021.
Mr Foster also admitted using the nickname “Hu She” to refer to an East Asian colleague and using the moniker “Biriyani” to refer to a white French co-worker in submissions to the SDT.
The City lawyer’s nicknames for his coworkers were first discovered through an internal probe that was launched by BNP Paribas in 2021, after a complaint was lodged against him by a colleague during an exit interview.
BNP Paribas later reported the findings of its investigation to the Solicitors Regulation Authority in March 2022. The French bank “negotiated an exit” with Mr Foster the same month.
The submissions showed Mr Foster used an array of “derogatory monikers” for colleagues in BNP Paribas’ London headquarters, both on emails and video calls, over the course of almost a year.
In his submissions to the SDT, Mr Foster admitted calling his colleagues various “unprofessional” names, almost entirely without their knowledge. Mr Foster also acknowledged the monikers would likely cause offence to his co-workers, if they were to find out about the nicknames, even if they were to share his sense of humour.
In seeking to defend himself, Mr Foster said his use of the nickname “Hu She” was intended to be a reference to the “Who He? Joke in Private Eye magazine, even while agreeing the moniker could be interpreted as “mocking or ridiculing a traditional Chinese name”.
Mr Foster also denied that the moniker “Mad Paul” had worked to undermine his co-worker’s credentials as a solicitor, insisting his repeated use of the “offensive” name was a reference to his colleague’s “slightly cavalier approach to timekeeping, attendance at the office and his interpersonal skill”.
The SDT ruled Mr Foster had failed to uphold the standards expected of solicitors, failed to act with integrity, and failed to act in a way that “encourages diversity, equity and inclusion” by using the offensive names for his colleagues.
Worth reading in full.
