CBI boss Tony Danker sacked after misconduct complaints against him
The boss of one of the UK’s largest business groups has been fired after allegations regarding his conduct with a female employee.
Tony Danker will leave the CBI with immediate effect and be replaced by Rain Newton-Smith.
Three other CBI employees have also been suspended ‘pending further investigation into a number of ongoing allegations’, the group said.
It also said the lobby group is ‘liaising with the police and has made clear its intention to co-operate fully with any police investigations’.
It said in a statement: ‘Tony Danker is dismissed with immediate effect following the independent investigation into specific complaints of workplace misconduct against him.
‘The board wishes to make clear he is not the subject of any of the more recent allegations in The Guardian but has determined that his own conduct fell short of that expected of the director-general.’
‘It is already clear to all of us that there have been serious failings in how we have acted as an organisation. We must do better, and we must be better.
‘We apologise to the victims of this organisational failure, including those impacted by the revulsion we have all felt at hearing their stories.
‘Nobody should feel unsafe in their workplace.’
The allegations made against those working at the CBI were described as ‘devastating’ in the statement.
Government officials also pulled out of meetings with the group and the accountancy firm EY had ended the secondment of one of its employees to the organisation.
Law firm Fox Williams had been hired to investigate the allegations made against Mr Danker.
That investigation will move into ‘the next phase’ of its inquiry, the CBI said.
A statement said: ‘The CBI is liaising with the police and has made clear its intention to cooperate fully with any police investigations.
Mr Danker had stepped aside in early March as the allegations were investigated.
Before working at the CBI he held positions in management consultancy firm McKinsey, The Guardian, and helped create the Labour government’s financial crisis economic rescue package in 2008.
Mr Danker, who had stepped aside while the investigation took place, previously apologised and said any ‘offence’ he caused was unintentional.
Following those recent allegations the main business lobby group for employers in the UK, at the heart of the British establishment, had cancelled all its external events last week as misconduct accusations mounted.
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