A Canadian bank operating in the UK which wanted to replace an older employee with a younger one has lost its Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing.  It was found to have committed an act of age discrimination and to have unfairly dismissed the older employee.

The claimant in this case, Mr Achim Beck, was employed as head of marketing by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The Bank was not happy with his performance and dismissed him at the age of 42. An employment agency was instructed to recruit a replacement, and the bank’s person specification for this purpose stated that it was “seeking a younger, entrepreneurial profile”.  The person who replaced him was aged 38 at the time.

The original tribunal noted that the word “younger” had been included in several drafts of the person specification against the express advice of the bank’s head of HR. The tribunal also concluded that the processes applied by the bank when dealing with Mr Beck were “hopelessly unfair” and that the redundancy exercise which led to his dismissal was a “sham”,  and so Mr Beck’s claims for unfair dismissal and age discrimination were upheld.  

The bank then appealed the case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). The bank attempted to argue that “younger” did not refer to age but referred to a less “senior” individual who would be less expensive, but the EAT was not convinced by this argument, stating that the use of the  word ‘younger’ constituted the “clearest possible evidence of potential age discrimination” and it has upheld the original tribunal’s decisions.