British lender HSBC fired employees in England for posting a video online of a mock beheading of a colleague fashioned after that of the Islamic State .
A Reuters report said the employees took the footage while having a team building activity in in Birmingham, England.
A screen grab posted on the wire agency's website showed five individuals wearing black overalls and masks surrounding another person in an orange jumpsuit. It said the men with their faces covered pretended that a coat hanger was a knife. The report, citing another paper, said the video was posted on Instagram, but later deleted.
Another report on news site The Sun, which broke the news, said that before pretending to execute the person in the jumpsuit, one of the participants yelled in Arabic "God is great." It added that the participants were joking and laughing during the video, which last seven seconds.
The report said the bank apologized for the video on Monday and added that the company will not tolerate such behavior. Reuters said the bank did not say how many of the employees who participated in the video were fired.
"As soon as The Sun brought this video to our attention we took the decision to sack the individuals involved. This is an abhorrent video and HSBC would like to apologise for any offence," HSBC told the Sun.
The video appeared to be making light of the grizzly execution videos posted online by Isis, which has beheaded several Westerners after their governments refused to heed its call to not intervene in the Middle East. Several Western governments led by the United States are extending assistance to several Middle Eastern nations under siege by ISIS.
Reuters noted that the stunt comes as HSBC and other large banks are trying to rehabilitate its image after encountering various scandals related to poor behaviour that range from the rigging of interest rates and currency markets to mis-selling of insurance products.
