Etienne Alexiou: Sacked ANZ banker denies misleading ASIC, admits lewd messaging

A former ANZ Bank trader seeking up to $30 million in damages for wrongful dismissal denied he lied to the corporate regulator about attempts to manipulate the financial markets.

Etienne Alexiou was sacked from his role as global head of the bank’s balance sheet trading in 2015 for sending vulgar Bloomberg messages to colleagues, referencing sex with his wife, using Viagra and referring to mothers at his daughter’s exclusive private school as “MILFs”, according to ANZ.

However, Mr Alexiou claims he was fired for exposing ANZ traders’ attempts to manipulate a key financial market interest rate to illegally generate huge profits for themselves and at the expense of other investors.

In court, ANZ’s barrister, Kate Morgan, SC, this week questioned Mr Alexiou about vulgar messages sent to colleagues during his employment at the bank as an interest rates trader, according to The Australian.

“I’m so sick of swiggin dom (Dom Perignon champagne) out of the bottle at strip clubs anyway,” Mr Alexiou wrote to one colleague.

In other messages the trader told a colleague one of the teachers at his daughter’s exclusive private school was a 9 out of 10 for attractiveness and that he would eat his lunch “off her ass.”

The trader admitted he boasted to a colleague in other messages that he had sex with an ageing Australian soap actress after a colleague quizzed him about sex with older women.

Mr Alexiou accepted in court many of the remarks were unprofessional and offensive to women, including his wife, who attended court. The trader acknowledged he may not have read all of ANZ’s code of conduct policies for employees.

In 2015, ANZ agreed to a $240 million fine imposed by ASIC for a series of regulatory failures, including a record $80 million penalty for unconscionable conduct by its bond trading division, where staff were accused of seeing the Wolf of Wall Street movie as more behavioural handbook than cautionary tale.

Meaning of slaughter

On Wednesday, under cross examination from Kate Morgan SC, Mr Alexiou said he did not tell ASIC in a 2014 interview he knew a colleague’s trading was designed to influence the Bank Bill Swap (BBSW) interest rate. He said he had told his managers that traders had engaged in unprofessional conduct.

“You didn’t tell ASIC (the colleague) was engaging in trading that had the dominant purpose of influencing the BBSW rate because you were deliberately misleading ASIC?” Ms Morgan put to Mr Alexiou.

“No,” he answered.

At the time of his 2014 compulsory witness examination by ASIC, Mr Alexiou was acting under advice from ANZ Bank’s lawyers, Matheson.

Trader’s claim

Mr Alexiou’s case alleges he heard another ANZ trader used the verb “slaughter” on the trading floor in 2011 about the interest rate he claims traders manipulated. He alleges he raised his concerns with his immediate boss in 2011 that the word slaughter may indicate inappropriate conduct, although no documented evidence exists of the complaint.

Much of ASIC’s successful case against ANZ for rate rigging focused on trading floor phrases like slaughter as being indicative of the misconduct the regulator alleged.

In a brief afternoon session Wednesday, ANZ’s barrister put to Mr Alexiou that some of his 2024 affidavit was incorrect about a complaint he made in 2013 about the ANZ treasury team’s conduct. Mr Alexiou admitted it was wrong to claim the treasury team had not issued any negotiable certificates of deposit (NCDs) in a two-week period.

The case in Sydney’s federal court under Justice Nye Perram is scheduled to last around six weeks. National Bank chairman and former high-ranking ANZ and Westpac employee Phil Chronican may appear in the witness box as soon as Friday.