A senior Barclays banker was dismissed from the company after being caught on film in an expletive-filled rant …
A senior banker based in the Singapore branch of Barclays bank was dismissed after being caught raging against a group of construction workers in Singapore.
According to the Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post, former head of foreign exchange strategy for the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) Olivier Desbarres was fired after a video clip of his tirade emerged online and was shown to Barclays executives.
In the one-minute video clip that emerged two weeks ago, the Frenchman, who joined Barclays in August last year, goes berserk and threatens a group of unseen workers at a construction site, calling them "animals, Chinese f**king animals".
Dressed casually in a polo shirt and sandals, he rages, ""I'm going to go after you. I'm going to burn your f**king house down with your f**king people in it."
"I will find your f**king family. I can find it very easily, I am a man with resources," he added, before picking up and throwing a nearby sheet of metal into a pit.
Upon realizing he is also being filmed, he shouts, "You're filming me? You think that's good? Put your f**king phone down because I'm going to wait for you to come out and take that phone and shove it up your f**king ass".
Construction workers standing out of range on the opposite side of the pit filmed the outburst.
Another report on citizen journalism site STOMP said Desbarres was upset at the noise and construction outside his house at Wimborne Road in Katong. Neighbours told STOMP this was not the first time they had seen him behaving aggressively, noting that he had thrown stones and even threatened the workers with golf clubs and iron rods before.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that police are investigating the incident following a complaint filed by the workers' parent construction company Unison Construction.
News of Desbarres' dismissal, as well as the video, has appeared in several foreign newspapers and websites such as The Times and International Business Times.
Watch the video on Huffington Post here.
Desbarres has appeared as an analyst on television networks such as CNBC before. The bank declined comment on the matter but a source reportedly told The Business Times, "It's a very sad thing. But that kind of behaviour... is so completely out of the standards that we expect, we had to ask him to leave."