A Singapore court has set a date for three former Rabobank employees to sue the AAA-rated Dutch co-operative bank for about S$100 million (HK$452.28 million).
The three derivatives experts allege in a Singapore High Court writ that Rabobank misled them into leaving good jobs at Barclays Capital in Hong Kong to set up a regional structured financing and arbitrage trading desk in the republic.
When they arrived in Singapore in 1997, they allege that not only did the desk not exist, but there were no plans for one, no budget or headcount.
They understood Rabobank had visions of expanding aggressively into investment banking across the Asia-Pacific. But then the Asian financial crisis struck.
'They hired us for jobs that did not exist,' said Harrison Kim, 38, Barclays' former head of structured transactions and proprietary trading director.
'We were inactive for almost two years. We did virtually nothing.' The three were ultimately fired in early 1999, paid off according to contract, but have since been unable to find new jobs.
'Derivatives is a fast-track business,' said Ranjiv Gopinath, 36, a fellow plaintiff. 'If you are out of the market even for a month, you don't just walk back into it.' Beijing-born James Wang, 39, said: 'It is very bad. I had a very successful career in Barclays. We survived the 1997 restructuring at Barclays . . . so this was not just simply a case of us jumping ship because Barclays was falling apart.' The hefty compensation they are seeking is based on what the three estimated they would have earned during the rest of the careers had they remained at Barclays.