The Royal Bank of Canada’s former chief financial officer is suing for her wrongful dismissal, in arguments that the bank made a “devastating” error when it fired her over a personal relationship with a coworker, denying that the two were romantically involved.
Nadine Ahn filed her legal action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, claiming that she suffered “palpable reputational harm” as well as “public humiliation” when the bank fired her in April. She’s asking for nearly US $50 million in pay and damages.
RBC stated on April 5 that it terminated Ahn for violating its code of conduct because she had been involved in an“undisclosed close personal relationship with another employee which led to preferential treatment of the employee including promotion and compensation increases.”
Ahn’s lawsuit describes how the bank’s chief executive, Dave McKay, sent her a text on the evening of April 4 in which she was asked to attend a meeting the next morning.
When she arrived, McKay wasn’t there, according to her court filing. She was instead met by questions from a lawyer about her relationship with Ken Mason, who the documents say worked in the bank’s corporate treasury group. Her laptop and cell phones were also seized.
At that meeting, “RBC’s investigator accused Ms. Ahn of providing Mr. Mason with preferential treatment and insinuated that they were having an affair,” according to her claim. “Ms. Ahn pleads that RBC’s allegations are patently false.”
According to the filing, Ahn and Mason had been friends since around 2013, long before she became the bank’s chief financial officer. She states that RBC’s code did not require Ahn to disclose a workplace friendship and added that “her friendship with Mr. Mason was not concealed from RBC in any way.”
Mason, who was also terminated, also filed a suit against Canada’s largest bank. His statement of claim says that the bank “ambushed Ken with a discriminatory and inappropriate/unreasonable workplace investigation meeting” that was “unfair, biased, and procedurally flawed.”
Royal Bank spokesperson Gillian McArdle said by email, “These claims are without merit, and we will vigorously defend against them in court. We conducted a thorough review with an investigation by outside legal counsel, and the facts are very clear: there was a significant breach of our Code of Conduct based on the irrefutable evidence collected during the investigation.”
Mason, who was not named by Royal Bank in the original statement that announced Ahn’s departure, had been promoted to a vice-presidential role in the corporate treasury department in November 2023.
Mason’s lawsuit, which claims more than US $20 million in pay and damages, asserts that if he and Ahn were of the same gender, the bank would not have investigated their relationship.
“RBC opted to make an example of Ken and Ahn by wrongly publicly shaming them in order to project moral righteousness, appearing to swiftly investigate and punish perceived corruption,” the court filing claims.
“The clear insinuation of the RBC Statement was that Ken and Ahn had had an extramarital affair and that Ken received career advancement and financial benefits as a result. This insinuation was false and defamatory.”
An article on Banking Dive.com indicated that the Royal Bank of Canada had filed a counterclaim against Ahn for US $3.2 million for “excess compensation” it paid to both Ahn and Mason. In their countersuit, RBC reiterated that it had evidence of “intimate communications” that the two had shared over several years, which included the ordering of “LoveBooks” online to celebrate their 10th anniversary, RBC alleged.
The bank said in a filing that their text messages “fantasized about a life together, such as reading in bed together.”
Banking Dive indicates that lawyers for Ahn and Mason did not reply to requests for comment from The Globe and Mail or Bloomberg as of Friday the 16th.
