A high-flying Australian banker is claiming £10 million in compensation over claims that he was pushed out of a City investment bank because he was not German enough.

Malcolm Perry, who earned more than £2 million a year as a senior banker at Dresdner Kleinwort in London, has accused his former employer, which is based in Germany and owned by the German insurance company Allianz, of race discrimination.

He told an employment tribunal in Central London yesterday that he was sidelined and made redundant as senior Frankfurt-based bankers hatched a secret plot to “turn it [Dresdner] back into a German bank”.

Mr Perry, who was paid a €1.3 million (about £900,000) “golden hello” on joining Dresdner when he was headhunted from JP Morgan in 2003, told the tribunal that he had become increasingly nervous about being marginalised during a major restructuring at the bank.

He raised his concerns with senior management but said that he was repeatedly brushed off. Mr Perry then approached another banker to ask “if he had any idea why I was being treated this way”. Mr Perry said: “In response, as if trying to reassure me that it was nothing personal, [he] said, ‘Malcolm, they want to turn it back into a German bank’.”

To do this, Mr Perry said, he and other non-Germans were excluded from management discussions before the restructuring process.

Later he told the tribunal about another banker who was British but was “regarded as German” by Frankfurt bosses because he had spent several years working in Germany and spoke the language fluently.

Mr Perry insisted that he was refused several posts that he was “very obviously qualified for” for on the grounds that senior management wanted key roles to go to Germans.

Regarding one position, he said: “I would have been ideal for the role if I was German, or a German-speaker.”

Dresdner Kleinwort, which denies the claims, said: “Malcolm Perry left the firm in 2006 during the restructuring of our capital markets division when his position was made redundant. We totally reject Mr Perry’s allegations of discrimination. We are a committed equal opportunity employer and will defend ourselves vigorously from Mr Perry’s claims,” it said.

The case — during which some of Europe’s top investment bankers are expected to give evidence — centres on the events leading up to a major restructuring of Dresdner Kleinwort in 2005. This involved merging the bank’s corporate and investment banking units, which had previously been run as separate businesses. Mr Perry, from Barnes, southwest London, claimed that he and other non German-speakers were excluded from discussions about the proposed restructuring. “It was absolutely clear to me that there were two agendas, the real agenda which I and Steve [another non-German banker] were excluded from and a phoney agenda which I was being asked to participate in but which had little or no bearing on an outcome that had already been decided,” he said.

When Ingrid Simler, QC, for Dresdner Kleinwort, suggested that senior roles were filled according to the best interests of the bank, Mr Perry told the tribunal that decisions taken by the senior banker overseeing the restructuring were driven by “non-business reasons”.

Ms Simler suggested that one role for which Mr Perry had not been considered eventually went to a German banker with a “stellar reputation” in his field. Mr Perry replied that the individual’s reputation was “actually rather poor” and that he had previously spent 12 months resuscitating a business unit that this banker had left in a “scandalous” mess.

Dresdner said that two of the bankers who eventually took over areas that Mr Perry had run were neither German nor German-speakers.

Although it accepted the bank’s “German roots” it denied that being German or having German language skills has influenced staffing decisions. English was the working language of the bank, it said.

The hearing continues.

Big paydays

August 2006 Helen Green, 36, a former Deutsche Bank secretary, wins more than £800,000 after a judge rules she has been the victim of “a deliberate and concerted campaign of bullying”

May 2005 Deutsche Bank settles a sexual orientation discrimination and race claim with Sid Saeed, a business manager. The bank was accused of allowing comments such as “queer boy” and “pillow biter”

August 2003 Steven Horkulak, a former senior director at Cantor Fitzgerald wins nearly £1 million after a judge finds he has been forced out of his job by a bullying boss. The damages were later reduced

June 2002 Julie Bower, an analyst with Schroder Securities, wins £1.4 million after a sex discrimination claim. The tribunal is told her former boss summed up her career as: “Had cancer, been a pain, now pregnant”

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