It’s impossible to know whether former Merrill Lynch banker Stanislav Stepchuk knew how spectacular the fallout would be when his extramarital relationship with a junior colleague began in 2023. But if there’s one case that illustrates the challenges of handling romantic relationships in the modern workplace, it’s this one.

What started as a series of “sexually explicit and highly personal” messages with a junior colleague at the bank’s London office developed into a months-long affair that eventually resulted in a bitter dispute.

In an employment hearing over the matter, Stepchuk, in his thirties, suggested his colleague, in her twenties, signalled willingness to take their relationship to an intimate level because of “the looks she gave” him at work, adding that she initiated meeting f

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