Stephanie Villalba, the former Merrill Lynch private banker, is to appeal against the lost of a sex discrimination case on the grounds that ...

Stephanie Villalba, the former Merrill Lynch private banker, is to appeal against the lost of a sex discrimination case on the grounds that Merrill employees gave “dishonest evidence.”

At the end of last year Ms Villalba failed to prove to a London-based employment tribunal that Merrill has sexually discriminated against her and paid her less than male colleagues.

The former private banker has since filed an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal accusing senior Merrill managers of giving “dishonest evidence to the tribunal, in a way which was obviously coordinated between them.”

The four managers accused were Asian chairman Raymundo Yu, European and Middle East private banking head Ausaf Abbas and human resource managers Sean Woodroffe and Pauline Cahill.

In response for the appeal, a Merrill spokesman told Wealthbriefing : “This was a well-reasoned judgment resulting from over three months of trial and deliberations and that we respect the tribunal's 78 page ruling.”

Ms Villalba’s appeal also claims that the tribunal erred in failing to take into account its finding that four other Merrill employees had submitted “incorrect” evidence.

“The Tribunal failed to consider that the repeated inaccuracies in the respondents' evidence were manifestly coordinated between the witnesses, or to determine the impact that these inaccuracies had on the overall cogency of their evidence, and their ability to satisfy the burden of proof.”

A date for the case has not yet been set, according to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Villalba is being represented by London-based law firm Lewis Silkin and barrister Dinah Rose QC of Blackstone Chambers.