(Bloomberg) -- An ex-Deutsche Bank AG credit trader lost a UK ruling after she sued the bank for millions of dollars in unpaid bonuses she said she was promised before losing her job.
The UK High Court rejected Shikha Gupta’s £2.6 million ($3.4 million) case, which she said should’ve been paid the money even after the lender’s bad bank shut down. Gupta failed to prove she was deceived by the lender after the non-core operating unit was closed at the end of 2016.
Gupta earned £485,000 in 2016 and was assured that she would be rewarded generously for her work with “more than ever” and “multiple” times of the amounts earned in 2016, she told the court.
“I do not accept that assurances were provided to her as she alleged upon which she could realistically either objectively or subjectively have any expectation,” the London judge said in the ruling published Thursday.
Lawyers for Gupta didn’t immediately respond to an email for comment.
Gupta was instrumental in unwinding high risk assets and the bank “knowingly deceived” her by denying the bonus, her lawyers had argued during the hearing in June. She was made redundant in 2017, months after the non-core operating unit was closed.
At its peak, the unit held around €100 billion in unwanted assets including mortgage-backed securities. The bank declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank welcomed the decision. Lawyers for the lender denied all allegations during the hearing saying the bank’s performance in 2016 “was demonstrably poor” and the management declared there would be no bonus pool available.
(Updates with details on the unit in the seventh paragraph)
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