A junior female employee at HSBC Holdings PLC accused the British lender's head of global markets, Thibaut de Roux, of inappropriate conduct at a hotel bar in New York, triggering his departure from the bank, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News.

The employee reported the alleged incident to HSBC's human resources department in early summer, after which the lender disclosed the matter to the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, one of the sources said.

HSBC notified staff in a memo in mid-September that de Roux would be leaving the lender and retiring from the banking industry. He joined HSBC in 1990 and served in a number of senior trading roles, according to the newswire.