Clothes shops chief sacked for 'groping' female employee at awards night gets £600,000 pay-off

The chief executive of one of Britain's biggest clothing chains was sacked yesterday for groping a female member of staff at an industry dinner.

Jim Hodkinson, 56, a married man with grandchildren, was given a £600,000 pay-off to terminate his contract with the fashion company New Look, where he had been in the top job for two years. He was said to have "touched up" one of his employees and offended another woman with an inappropriate comment at the Retail Week awards dinner .

In what is believed to be the first time anyone of such a high position has been publicly dismissed for inappropriate sexual behaviour, New Look announced to the stock market that his dismissal was due to "criticism of his conduct".

After negotiations with Mr Hodkinson and his lawyers, the New Look board agreed to honour his contract, giving him a year's salary, bonus and pension as a pay-off, worth about £600,000.

Yesterday the deposed chief executive hit back, insisting: "The incident was very, very minor and I apologised." He said the matter had been handled appallingly, and said clashes with other board members had been the real reason behind his dismissal - a claim denied by the company chairman, Howard Dyer. A seniorinsider at the company said: "If somebody touches someone in an inappropriate way and the woman feels aggrieved that is the definition in law of sexual harassment. A man cannot judge that, he is not aware of the woman's feelings. There is no such thing as minor sexual harassment."

The chief executive's "misbehaviour" happened at a disco after the awards dinner at the Grosvenor House hotel in London on 6 March.

Mr Hodkinson was said to have "complimented" a woman staff member on her bottom before touching it. He then made a similar comment to a young woman from a firm of headhunters used by the company.

At the end of months of discussions and negotiations the board of New Look decided unanimously to sack Mr Hodkinson.

Mr Dyer said yesterday: "We do not welcome this ... and coming three weeks before our results come out, the timing for us is appalling. The last thing we wanted to do was change chief executive."

He said the women made their separate complaints to the board within a week of the dinner and the chief executive was given his opportunity to explain. "If it had been just a bit of tomfoolery it would have been a different set of circumstances," Mr Dyer said.

"We took the view that this behaviour was of a serious nature, irrespective of his willingness to apologise, and could not be tolerated. He was the chief executive of a company which employs a lot of women.

"We listened to his appeal and secondly we have commitment of care to the ladies involved and did not want to drag them through the courts."

Mr Dyer denied the real reason was a clash between the chief executive, recruited from Kingfisher in May 1998, himself and the New Look founder, Tom Singh. "We were 100 per cent behind the chief executive," he said.

Shares in the company have fallen recently from a peak of 245p last summer to 112.5p at yesterday's close. The new chief executive will be Stephen Sunnucks, 42, the company's retail managing director.

Speaking from his home in Dorset yesterday, with his wife of 31 years by his side, Mr Hodkinson said: "In hindsight I shouldn't have said those things and I'm quite willing to apologise. But I feel let down, not by the company but by the board, especially the chairman who was behind all this."

He added: "This was at a trade dinner with 1,000 people on a packed dancefloor. Everybody was jocular and it was a good, fun evening withpeople enjoying themselves - you must draw your own conclusions.

"I have been paid in full for my year's contract and all the other things that go with it - that demonstrates the company is on very shaky ground."

Mr Hodkinson's wife, Jan, described the whole affair as "pathetic".