Morning Coffee: Married senior bankers fired for having an affair deny all knowledge of it. No disruption to coming deals

efinancialcareers.com:

53-year-old Nadine Ahn is married with children. So is circa 56-year-old Ken Mason. Nadine and Ken were good friends for a decade and both worked for Royal Bank of Canada. She became CFO and says she was even on track to become CEO. He was a VP of in the treasury team, dealing with capital and term funding. 

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On April 5th both Nadine and Ken were fired. RBC says they were having an affair and that it, «conducted a thorough review with an investigation by outside legal counsel and the facts are very clear that there was a significant breach of our Code of Conduct based on the irrefutable evidence.» RBC also says Nadine gave Ken preferential treatment in his career.

Nadine and Ken say this is absolutely not true; they were not having an affair, there were no preferential activities. She was earning about $3m a year and is now suing RBC for $49m, including $20m due to “devastating, worldwide reputational harm.” We don't know how much Ken was earning, but he's suing RBC for $20m. 

Dave McKay, RBC's president and CEO was even roped into the intrigue. He reportedly sent Nadine a confounding text message on the evening of Thursday April 4th, asking her to attend an unexpected meeting on Friday morning. When she arrived at the meeting, there was no sign of McKay and only a lawyer and HR person who promptly seized her laptop and phone and interrogated her for two hours. Mason was lured by the chief risk officer and faced a similar fate. 

The case is curious to the extent that the bank is adamant that the affair occurred and plans to «vigorously defend» itself, but the alleged perpetrators are equally adamant that theirs was a purely platonic and professional non-tryst. 

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