An employment tribunal is to be held on 5th October for John Argent, a former trader at Lloyds Banking Group, who is suing the bank for unfair dismissal following the probe into alleged Libor rate rigging.
Mr Argent was dismissed, along with seven other Lloyds employees, after an investigation into the bank’s apparent manipulation of Libor interest rates resulted in it being forced to pay a significant financial penalty.
In July 2014, regulators in the US and Britain served Lloyds, which is partly owned by the British Government, with a fine amounting to $370 million (£242 million) for manipulation of Libor and other interest rates.
Following the penalty, the bank launched an investigation into the behaviour of its traders and, as a direct result, fired a total of eight employees less than two months later.
In a statement made regarding Mr Argent’s case, a spokesman for Lloyds said: “As the matter is subject to ongoing Employment Tribunal proceedings it would be inappropriate for us to comment in detail, other than to say that we do not consider this claim to have merit.
“The individual concerned was dismissed following a thorough disciplinary process.”
A number of former employees from other banks, including RBS and HSBC, have also taken legal action for unfair dismissal.
As part of his unfair dismissal case, Perry Stimpson, a former Citigroup FX trader, has claimed that senior management knew about the sharing of client information and overlooked the practice.
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