Two FTSE 100 insurers, a top pension scheme and other companies quit the CBI on Friday after the employers’ organisation was rocked by a second allegation of rape, casting its future into doubt.
The insurers Aviva and Phoenix and the £20bn pension scheme the People’s Partnership said they were cancelling their memberships after the latest allegations were published by the Guardian.
The newspaper reported that a woman alleged she was raped while working for the CBI. She was the second woman to make an accusation of rape involving the CBI.
“In light of the very serious allegations made, and the CBI’s handling of the process and response, we believe the CBI is no longer able to fulfil its core function — to be a representative voice of business in the UK,” Aviva said. “We have therefore regrettably terminated our membership with immediate effect.”
The People’s Partnership, which has 6mn members, said: “Following the very serious allegations made, we have made the decision that we can no longer remain members of the CBI.”
Vitality, a smaller UK health insurer, also quit, as did chip intellectual property designer Imagination Technologies.
“We don’t believe that they have the credibility to represent business at this point,” Neville Koopowitz, Vitality chief executive, said. One person close to Imagination Technologies said the recent allegations “tipped the balance” in favour of quitting, but the original driver had been a lack of value for money.
The Association of British Insurers, the trade body for the UK insurance industry, said it was withdrawing its CBI membership.
“It has become untenable to retain our membership in light of further serious allegations and [we] have informed the CBI of our decision to leave with immediate effect,” the ABI said.
Suffolk-based brewer Adnams, which has about 600 employees, said it had decided to quit the CBI after the latest sexual misconduct claims.
“I’ve told the CBI that we are formally going to write to them and withdraw from the organisation,” said Andy Wood, Adnams’ chief executive.
In a further blow, Asda said it had paused all engagements with the CBI, while Shell had already suspended its activities with the group a week ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. A senior executive at one of the FTSE’s largest 20 companies said it would stop paying its membership dues.
Ann Francke, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, a professional body that encourages better management practices, said the pattern of allegations and leadership failures now left the CBI facing an “absolutely existential crisis”.
The new rape allegation, which the CBI has now passed to the police, is the latest in a series of claims about the workplace culture, including sexual harassment, drug-taking and bullying that have rocked the UK employers’ organisation in recent weeks.
The CBI said on Thursday that it had been passed information about a serious crime and was now “liaising closely” with the police.
The Guardian reported the new case of rape had taken place at one of the CBI’s overseas offices, but declined to specify the date of the incident or the country where it took place in order to protect the alleged victim’s identity.
The City of London Police is already investigating an allegation of rape at a 2019 CBI staff party on a boat on the river Thames, alongside a series of other allegations of misconduct made by a dozen people who have worked at the organisation.
Fox Williams, the law firm, is conducting an independent investigation into those allegations at the request of the CBI, which has led to the suspension of three staff. The CBI has said it expects to publish the conclusions from the inquiry early next week.
Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds Banking Group, TSB, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Macquarie Group and the Bank of Ireland have paused activities with the CBI pending the outcome of the investigation.
Separately, the CBI sacked its former director-general Tony Danker this month for previous workplace misconduct. Danker said this week that he had been made the “fall guy” for the much more serious allegations.
The Guardian report included graphic details of the second alleged rape, which the woman said took place at the hands of two men after a night of heavy drinking.
The woman said she had no recollection of the rape itself, but had described in detail the physical signs that led her to believe she was raped and was later presented in the office with an explicit photograph related to the incident.
The woman told the Guardian that she blamed the CBI for allowing an atmosphere to be created in which such incidents could take place, and for failing to provide adequate human resources support.
CBI president Brian McBride said the allegations reported in the Guardian were “abhorrent” and that the CBI had not been previously aware of them. “It is vital that they are thoroughly investigated now and we are liaising closely with the police to help ensure any perpetrators are brought to justice,” he added.
The Guardian also reported a 2018 case in which a female employee was stalked by a male colleague. An internal CBI investigation made a finding of harassment, but the incident was not taken to the police.
Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, who was director-general of the CBI at the time, told the Guardian she was not made aware of the complaint, describing the decision not to bring it to her attention as “appalling”.
Additional reporting by Judith Evans, David Sheppard, Laura Onita, Owen Walker, Anna Gross and Oliver Barnes
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