ING must pay €900,000 after court finds misconduct in banker’s firing
Dutch banking giant ING must pay a former top executive more than 900,000 euros following a court ruling that found the bank acted with “serious culpability” in his dismissal, according to recent decisions by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and the court in Noord-Holland, RTL reports.
The 53-year-old banker, whose name was not disclosed, worked at ING for nearly 25 years. He spent his entire career in the wholesale division focused on large corporate clients and rose through the ranks to become global head of Capital Structuring & Advisory in 2023. In that role, he was among the top 150 of the 15,000 ING employees in the Netherlands and earned an annual gross salary, including bonuses, of 440,000 euros.
In September 2023, as part of a corporate restructuring within the wholesale division, his position was eliminated. ING had merged multiple business units, resulting in job losses. The banker applied for several newly created roles but was rejected. He filed formal objections, arguing that his former role encompassed multiple functions and he should have been eligible for reassignment.
In May 2024, ING initiated legal proceedings to terminate his contract. The court in Noord-Holland approved the request in July, and the executive was officially dismissed in October. The court granted him a severance package totaling more than 289,000 euros, labeled as a statutory transition payment.
Although the court recognized that ING had mishandled parts of the dismissal process — particularly by failing to seriously explore options for redeploying the executive internally — it initially ruled that the mistakes did not justify an additional penalty.
The former banker appealed the decision, and the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled in his favor. The appellate judges determined that ING’s actions amounted to “seriously culpable conduct” because the bank failed to demonstrate any genuine intention to redeploy him. The court stated:
“Based on ING’s lack of action throughout the entire process, the court concludes that the bank — or at least the employee’s managers — never actually intended to retain him and in fact wanted to get rid of him.”
The court ordered ING to pay an additional 220,000 euros in fair compensation, on top of the previously awarded transition fee. It also ruled that the transition payment should be increased by over 4,000 euros. The total severance payment now exceeds 513,000 euros.
Furthermore, the banker remained on paid leave between September 2023 and October 2024, receiving his salary and a partial 2023 bonus during that time. That alone cost ING approximately 400,000 euros, bringing the total cost of the termination to more than 900,000 euros.
The former executive had initially demanded 1.7 million euros in damages — significantly more than the final court award. RTL could not reach his lawyer for comment, and it remains unclear whether further legal steps will follow.
An ING spokesperson declined to comment on the case, stating, “As a rule, we never comment on conflicts with individual employees.”
The ruling comes as ING is undergoing another wave of restructuring within the same wholesale division. The bank announced in late June that it would cut 230 jobs, mainly in senior management.
