A HEDGE fund boss allegedly took his female employees to a strip club and forced them to watch lapdances given to him. He also brought along escorts to sit in meetings.
These were some of the allegations made during a testimony by one of UK financier Mark Lowe’s former employees, Miss Jordan Wimmer, who is suing him for $9 million in compensation for sexual harassment.
In the case being heard in a Central London Employment tribunal, Miss Wimmer, 29, also said that she and other women were repeatedly told sexist and inappropriate jokes in her five years there.
Miss Wimmer started out on a salary of $116,000 a year and a guaranteed $23,000 bonus, which rose to more than $1 million in her last full year of work. Her role was to get wealthy investors to invest in hedge funds.
Charlie’s Angels
She was part of a three-woman team at Mr Lowe’s firm Nomos Capital, which he called “Mark’s Angels”, reported Daily Mail.
She said Mr Lowe took his inspiration from the film Charlie’s Angels – she was blonde, one colleague was brunette and another was Chinese.
Mr Lowe, who built up a fortune estimated at $238 million through Nomos Capital, allegedly had a penchant for high-class escorts and regularly invited them to work functions attended by female colleagues and clients.
Miss Wimmer claimed Mr Lowe, a married father of two, liked Asian women and told her he did not find her attractive.
She said that he began behaving “inappropriately” almost immediately after she joined the firm in 2004 and would “frequently invade the personal space”, making them feel “awkward”.
Miss Wimmer claimed he tried to kiss her at a hotel in Milan, Italy.
The Oxford-educated Mr Lowe, she said, once allegedly employed an Asian member of the staff “because he had taken a fancy to her in the airport queue”.
Mr Lowe, now based in Switzerland, is also alleged to have used a racial slur to refer to Mr Barack Obama after he was elected US president.
On several occasions, Miss Wimmer alleged, Mr Lowe, who featured in the 2005 Sunday Times rich list, attended meetings with overseas clients accompanied by a prostitute named Ling, said a report in the Daily Telegraph.
Miss Wimmer said: “Mark brought Ling along to a number of investor and distribution meetings in Hong Kong during October 2005.
Miss Wimmer described Ling’s revealing outfit at one formal business occasion as “very inappropriate”.
Russian escort
He also brought along a Russian escort to functions in London, Paris and Geneva, the tribunal heard.
Miss Wimmer also told the tribunal that during a work trip to Paris, Mr Lowe took her and another female colleague to a strip club where he attempted to persuade them to have a “private dance”.
At a charity function in October 2007, Mr Lowe told his fund manager clients that Miss Wimmer was a dumb blonde and “just the decorative one”.
She began to have migraines and was diagnosed with depression in July 2007 and later felt suicidal.
In October 2008, Miss Wimmer was admitted to a private, $23,000-a-week psychiatric unit for six weeks.
She claimed she was sacked in February 2009 – only her third day back in the office.
She is bringing legal proceedings against Mr Lowe and the firm for alleged sex discrimination, unlawful deduction of wages, unfair constructive dismissal and disability discrimination.
She told the tribunal: “This past year has been the worst of my life. It has been like a black hole that I cannot get out of.”
Mr Lowe, who is attending the hearing, denies the allegations. The hearing continues.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
