London M&A Analyst Claims She Was Fired Over “Fruit” + Bonus Discrimination – Trying to Understand This

I’ve seen a TikTok circulating recently (not naming names for obvious reasons) from a former London M&A An/As who says she was fired in circumstances that, on the face of it, sound extremely questionable. Curious if anyone else here has seen her videos as well.

Her version of events is roughly as follows.

She was working in London M&A and had been poached from another bank. She says she was regularly working until 2am. She claims that her bonus was roughly 4x lower than the men on her team and that she raised this issue internally. She then took sick leave, and two days later she was terminated. The official reason given was something trivial, allegedly “eating fruit,” but she believes the real reason was retaliation for raising the bonus discrepancy.

She has also said the experience gave her PTSD and that she is now unable to work because she has lost trust in employers, and is currently on benefits.

First, if retaliation for raising pay discrimination concerns happened, that would be a very serious compliance issue. No serious bank wants to be anywhere near that kind of exposure, especially in London.

Second, she is a South Asian woman. Whatever people on here think about DEI, the reality is that most major banks are actively trying to increase female representation, and particularly ethnic minority female representation, at every level of the pipeline. There are diversity scholarships, targeted recruitment initiatives, internal mobility programmes, and heavy scrutiny around promotion rates from analyst to associate. I am not saying discrimination cannot happen. I am saying the institutional incentives today are strongly aligned towards retaining and promoting high performing women, not randomly pushing them out.

I do not want to be the stereotypical WSO poster who jumps straight to cynicism. Women absolutely deserve a fair shot in finance. If anything, banks are under pressure to do more, not less, to support progression.

What makes this difficult to assess from the outside is that terminations in London investment banking are rarely framed around something trivial. There is usually documentation, performance tracking, and HR sign off. That does not mean unfair decisions never happen. It does mean there is almost always more context than what makes it to social media.

Genuinely interested if anyone else has seen the videos and what your take is, especially those in London M&A. In the current DEI and compliance environment, how plausible is retaliation of this nature? And how often do we see performance or interpersonal issues that never make it into the public narrative?