Royal Bank last week filed a countersuit against former chief financial officer Nadine Ang, seeking C$4.4 million (US$3.2 million) for “excessive compensation” paid to Ang and former finance executive Ken Mason.
bank Ann and Mason are fired In April, the couple claimed they had breached the bank’s code of conduct by failing to disclose their “close personal” relationship.
Ann and Mason Each sued RBC. This month, they filed a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal, alleging the bank misrepresented their relationship and damaged both their reputations by speculating about an affair.
In its counterclaim last week, RBC reiterated its argument that the relationship between Ang and Mason was more than just friendship and that it had evidence of “intimate communication” between the two over several years.
Documents filed by RBC in the Ontario Superior Court. The Globe and Mail and other sources cite text messages, instant messages and emails between Ahn and Mason, as well as memorabilia showing they had pet names for each other.
To celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, Mason ordered two 43-page “love books” online and had them delivered to his workplace, according to RBC.
According to Banks, a passage from the book reads, “Prickly Pear and KD lived happily ever after!”
RBC said Ahn and Mason scheduled “liquidity meetings” — allegedly code for drinking cocktails — on their work calendars. During one such meeting at a Toronto restaurant in May 2016, the bank alleges, the two scribbled drink orders on coasters, with notes like “concert, night out, winery.” Mason covered the coasters with plexiglass and kept them in his work area, RBC said.
“Ann forwarded romantic poems to Mr. Mason, describing her as falling in love with him the first time she saw him,” the bank said in the filing. According to Bloomberg“During this time, Ahn and Mason continued to meet regularly outside the office and organized a lunch to celebrate their ‘fourth anniversary’ on August 18, 2017.”
Text messages between the pair “fantasised about a life together, including reading together in bed,” Banks said in the filing, and Mason allegedly wrote a poem about Ann that described “kisses, lingering physical contact and encounters in elevators.”
“secret”
In its filing, RBC also cited instances when Ahn had instructed Mason how to hide his text message notifications and instructed him not to meet up when he was with her husband. The bank cited as evidence that they intended to keep their relationship “private,” The Globe and Mail reported.
“On March 11, 2019, Ms Ann messaged Mr Mason saying, ‘I love you’. Mr Mason replied 15 seconds later, ‘I love you too’,” the bank said.
The bank said it did not have access to “Messrs. Ahn and Mason’s messages, except to the extent that they copied their personal communications onto RBC’s systems,” Bloomberg reported.
Lawyers for Ahn and Mason did not respond to requests for comment from The Globe and Mail and Bloomberg on Friday.
“Contrary to claims made by Ms. Ann and Mr. Mason, our investigation determined that they had an undisclosed, close personal relationship in which Ms. Ann misused her authority as CFO to directly benefit Mr. Mason,” RBC spokeswoman Gillian McArdle said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “As she was a named executive officer, she was obligated to disclose.”
“Project Ken”
The C$4.4 million in damages RBC is seeking consists of the cancellation of a C$3.3 million bonus from Ang, plus a further C$1.14 million in “excessive compensation which Ang caused RBC to pay to Mason in breach of his fiduciary duties.”
RBC alleges that Mr. Ang used his position to give Mr. Mason “preferential treatment.” When Mr. Mason was appointed vice president and head of capital and long-term funding at the bank in November, Mr. Ang “ignored” the objections of senior bank executives who reported to Mr. Mason, the bank alleges.
“The decision to promote Mr Mason was substantially made by Mr Ang,” the bank said.
According to the bank’s filing, the promotion was a “core objective” of a plan Mason drafted in 2017 called “Project Ken.” “Mr. Ann supported Mr. Mason in implementing that plan,” the bank said.
RBC alleges that Ang began pushing for a big pay increase for Mason the day he became CFO in 2021. In the two years before Mason became vice president, his compensation increased 58%, from $695,000 to $1.1 million, according to the bank’s filings.
The bank also claims that when another employee raised concerns about Mason’s pay, Ang fired him without cause, adding that the former employee is “seeking compensation from RBC for being wrongfully terminated due to Ang’s conduct.”
“The same conflict of interest”
Incidentally, RBC alleged in 2022 that Ang fired an employee because he had an undisclosed personal relationship with a subordinate.
“At the time he made his decision to terminate his employment, Mr. Ang was aware of but concealed from RBC a substantially identical conflict of interest,” the bank said in a filing last week.
RBC received an anonymous whistleblower in March after an employee “witnessed Ang and Mason embracing and kissing as they exited an elevator together” at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto, raising questions about why Mason had been promoted, the bank said in a filing.
The bank said that when lawyers asked Ang about his relationship with Mason on what would have been his last day at RBC, he initially said the two were friends and “that’s it,” adding that his communications with Mason were about “purely business information.”
“Later in the interview, Ms. Ang changed her testimony after being shown several intimate interactions with Mr. Mason,” RBC said in a filing last week. “Ms. Ang’s misconduct, combined with her dishonesty during the interview, made her continued employment as a senior executive at RBC unfeasible.”
“Ann was a highly respected member of our executive team and a senior leader with fiduciary responsibility. We supported her career growth and had great confidence in her abilities,” McArdle said. “We are disappointed to learn the allegations are true.”
