The UK banking industry is highly regulated; banks must comply with a wide range of legal and regulatory rules, as well as social and ethical standards. But why do all these rules and regulations exist? Simply, they exist because they are necessary to safeguard investors, customers, workers, the economy, the general public, and so on.

Sometimes, some banks choose to disregard some rules and standards. When this happens, a bank's failures to comply with the rules and standards may come to light when those who are responsible for 'policing' the banks, such as the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA), discover them or if aggrieved individuals or groups, such as customers, investors and workers, report them to the relevant authorities.

Failure to comply with rules and regulations that come to light can lead to potentially very costly and high profile consequences, as demonstrated by the UK landmark employment race discrimination case Chagger v Abbey National & Hopkins (2006).

Abbey National is the Banco Santander owned UK bank featuring the sensational Lewis Hamilton, F1 driver for the Formula 1 McLaren Mercedes team, in its marketing adverts. It has now been re-named as Santander UK. The new name was unveiled in London in January 2010 by Lewis Hamilton and the Banco Santander chairman, Emilio Botin.

Balbinder Chagger was of Indian origin, worked for Abbey Santander UK as a Trading Risk Controller and reported into Nigel Hopkins.

In 2006, the Lewis Hamilton featuring Abbey Santander UK terminated Balbinder Chagger's employment, claiming the termination was the outcome of a fairly conducted redundancy exercise. Balbinder Chagger alleged that the actual reasons underlying his termination were race discrimination and unfairness. He escalated his allegations to the Employment Tribunal.

The Employment Tribunal investigating the case found in Mr Chagger's favour; that both Abbey Santander UK and Nigel Hopkins had, in fact, racially discriminated against him and terminated his employment unfairly.

In arriving at its findings, the Employment Tribunal highlighted a multitude of failures to comply with rules and regulations committed by Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins. A few of the failures are listed below.

Firstly, Abbey Santander UK and Nigel Hopkins both had not complied with the UK law regarding discrimination; they had both unlawfully racially discriminated against Balbinder Chagger.

Secondly, Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins had also not complied with the UK law regrding employment. The 1996 Employment Rights Act says employees must be chosen fairly for redundancy. However, Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins chose Mr Chagger unfairly.

Thirdly, Abbey Santander UK had not complied with the UK's statutory redundancy procedure; Abbey Santander UK had not informed Mr Chagger, in writing, why it was contemplating making him redundant and also did not invite him to a meeting to discuss the situation.

Fourthly, Abbey Santander UK had not complied with the practices recommended by the statutory UK 'Code of Practice on Racial Policy in Employment' on 2 accounts. First, Abbey Santander UK had not provided any Equal Opportunity Training to its officers. On this point, Mr Chagger had tried to resolve the issues surrounding his termination directly with Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins, by raising grievances and appeals against the termination decision. Due to a culture of denial and refusal at Abbey Santander UK, Mr Chagger's complaints were simply dismissed out of hand by each and every manager who had been assigned to look into them. Abbey Santander UK had not provided any Equal Opportunity Training to any of its officers that it had assigned to look into Mr Chagger's complaints. Second, Abbey Santander UK had not been carrying out the monitoring recommended by the Code of Conduct. On this point, the Tribunal discovered and listed a multitude of monitoring failures committed by Abbey Santander UK, as well as the failures to give serious thought to allegations of race discrimination and to address them promptly.

Fifthly, Abbey Santander UK had not complied with the Race Relations Act (Questions and Replies) Order 1977. The Employment Tribunal found that Abbey Santander UK's response to Mr Chagger's race discrimination questionnaire (RR65) was evasive, and that Abbey Santander UK had failed to answer his questionnaire.

Emilio Botin's Abbey Santander UK legal case highlights, by way of example, the importance of complying with rules and regulations, and the potentially very costly and high profile consequences of failing to do so.

It can be seen that not 'playing by the rules' exposed the Lewis Hamilton F1 driver featuring Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins to costly legal fees in defending themselves. It also exposed Emilio Botin's Abbey Santander UK to devoting staff and other resources to defend itself, which could have been deployed on other work instead. Furthermore, it exposed Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins to a compensation liability, which the Employment Tribunal eventually set at £2.8 million, being a record-breaking amount.

It is difficult to imagine how association with a race discrimination finding and/or a record-breaking compensation award cannot raise the profile of an organistion and impact its reputation in some way. The Abbey Santander UK story made the front page of the Financial Times newspaper back in October 2008.

Abbey Santander UK, along with Mr Hopkins, then embarked on a rearguard action of appeals to clear its name and to reduce the compensation awarded against it. The process of doing so entails further costs and risks. In fact, it resulted in Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins conceding that they had discriminated against Mr Chagger, and also in the creation of several new legal precedents of considerable significance, thereby further raising the profile of Abbey Santander UK and Mr Hopkins through association with UK legal history.