Etienne Alexiou defends school ethics role amid ANZ court case
Ethics teacher and ex-bank trader Etienne Alexiou has faced more intense questioning over messages describing sexual fantasies about his daughter's teacher and school-gate mothers.
A former ANZ trader has defended his role as an ethics adviser at a primary school after he admitted to sending messages to colleagues concerning his sexual fantasies about his daughter’s teacher and mothers at the school gate.
Etienne Alexiou, who was sacked from his role as global head of the bank’s balance sheet trading department in September 2015, has been engaged in legal action against his former employer on-and-off for almost a decade.
ANZ maintains it fired him for lewd messages he sent colleagues, but Mr Alexiou claims he was the fall guy for blowing the whistle on alleged rigging of the bank bill swap rate (BBSW) at ANZ.
The bank settled with ASIC on that issue for $50m in 2017.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Alexiou endured another bruising day of cross-examination in the witness box at the Federal Court in Sydney as the bank sought to highlight inconsistencies in his evidence.
Kate Morgan SC, acting for ANZ, raised an interview Mr Alexiou had given the Australian Financial Review in May 2017 about the launch of his hedge fund, Belay Capital.
The piece mentioned his role as a volunteer ethics teacher at an Eastern suburbs government primary school, a position Mr Alexiou told the court he still held.
“You don’t think that the conduct that has been revealed in the Bloomberg chats... would discourage you from taking on that role?”, Ms Morgan asked.
Mr Alexiou disagreed, after first giving the court a long treatise on the history of ethics that name-checked Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato and traced a line through to Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant.
The former trader said his branch of ethics dealt with morality - the “question of what makes someone a good person” - rather than consequentialism, which determines the outcomes of actions.
Mr Alexiou’s LinkedIn page trumpets his works as an ethics adviser, noting that he was once nominated for a Kinghorn Award for ethics volunteers.
“Beyond the boardroom, I’ve spent a decade volunteering as a Primary Teacher, reflecting my deep commitment to community, education, and leadership development,” his LinkedIn states.
Lying to ASIC
On Monday, the first day of his trial in the Federal Court, Mr Alexiou was repeatedly asked by Ms Morgan whether he had ever lied to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. He told the court he “certainly didn’t intend to”.
But on Tuesday, after a bruising day in the witness box he caved to Ms Morgan’s questioning when she asked: “You were lying to ASIC, is that correct?”
“On reflection, I think I was,” Mr Alexiou responded, later adding: “I certainly did not intend to lie.”
It is a criminal offence to lie to ASIC. However, after much legal wrangling, Justice Nye Perram had moments earlier granted Mr Alexiou an indemnity certificate under Section 128 of the Evidence Act.
This means that Mr Alexiou is protected from having self-incriminating evidence used against him in any future legal proceedings.
The lie in question related to what Mr Alexiou told ASIC on May 22, 2015, when he was informed he was a potential witness or suspect in the regulator’s investigation into BBSW.
In a written response, Mr Alexiou said he was ‘not aware of anyone participating in the practice’, which was defined as ‘the dominant purpose of trying to influence the BBSW rate set on any given day’.
Ms Morgan put it to Mr Alexiou that his responses to ASIC were inconsistent with his subsequent case against ANZ.
“Lying to ASIC or damaging your case - that was the choice you were confronted with?”, Ms Morgan asked him.
“Not in my mind,” Mr Alexiou responded.
Ms Morgan then suggested he had “decided to tell your honour that you lied to ASIC”.
But Mr Alexiou responded: “I chose to tell the truth”, later adding that he was “very reliant on my lawyers”.
He also admitted to being “less than frank” with lawyers from Clayton Utz who were carrying out an investigation for ANZ in December 2014.
The court also heard that Mr Alexiou had raised concerns with senior management at ANZ about a colleague using the phrase to “slaughter the rate set”.
MILF messages
In previous hearings, Mr Alexiou admitted to sending “derogatory and offensive” messages to colleagues about mothers at his daughter’s school.
Ms Morgan had earlier brought up messages Mr Alexiou had shared with colleagues in 2011 where he was asked about whether there were any “MILFs” at an induction day for his daughter at Ascham School.
“What does MILF stand for?” Ms Morgan asked.
“Mother I’d like to f---,” Mr Alexiou responded.
“You thought it was okay to describe the mothers of daughters’ school, mothers of your daughters’ classmates – as mother you’d like to f---?”, Ms Morgan asked.
“No,” Mr Alexiou responded.
The former trader, who now runs his own private equity firm, accepted it was “inappropriate to (his) wife and daughters”.
The court also heard Mr Alexiou had detailed to colleagues the ideal physical requirements for his daughter’s primary school teacher. Ms Morgan told him he had stipulated “good cans - by which you mean good breasts” and for her not to “wear undies at parents’ evening”.
“The final comment you made about your daughter’s primary school teachers is that you would ‘eat your dinner off her arse’?”, Ms Morgan asked. He accepted that this too was offensive and derogatory.
In an at times intense and heated cross-examination, Mr Alexiou admitted he had once recorded the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.
Asked by a colleague about his favourite model, he replied in a Bloomberg message exchange: “I just have a collage of parts like a Mr Potato head”.
“If you chopped them all up you’d create your favourite?” Ms Morgan continued. “What else could you possibly mean by Mr Potato Head?”
Mr Alexiou admitted that he now accepted the messages were “derogatory and offensive to women”.
“At the time I wrote it I don’t believe anyone was offended,” he added.
Mr Alexiou had also boasted about sleeping with his wife, telling his colleagues: “I got laid!!!”
The case is expected to last six weeks.
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Originally published as Etienne Alexiou defends school ethics role amid ANZ court case
