In response, NAB said it could not know whether Diawara found it harder to communicate with the trading desk after the lunch.

Diawara’s claim also said she had felt intimidated and scared when her immediate superior, head of trading Tim McCaughey in late 2019 or early 2020, approached her desk saying words to the effect that “he did not want to hear again about a customer asking about NAB’s ability deal Repo in RMBS [residential mortgage backed securities]” while “brandishing a baseball bat in his hands.”

NAB’s defence took issue with the word “brandishing,” saying the trading room had a number of Chicago Cubs toy baseball bats and McCaughey at times carried one of the souvenir bats as a “fidget toy” while walking around the room and talking with colleagues. The bank denied McCaughey was Diawara’s immediate boss, and denied he carried the bat in a threatening manner.

In 2019, Diawara’s pay was lifted from $220,000 to $350,000 without any change in her responsibilities. In her statement of claim, Diawara said NAB had “aligned the applicant’s salary with that of her male peers,” but it did not pay backpay to compensate her for the period during which her pay was lower than that of her male peers.

NAB’s defence confirmed the pay increase, but said this was because of a review that took place across the corporate and institutional bank into banker pay, which led to increases in fixed salaries and less focus on bonuses for many bankers in the markets team.

NAB’s group executive for corporate and institutional banking David Gall said in a statement that it was committed to supporting equality and diversity, but it was limited in what it could say because the matter was before the court. “We take these matters extremely seriously and are defending the allegations made against NAB,” Gall said.

Lawyer Petrine Costigan, who is representing Diawara, declined to comment because the matter is before the court.

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