Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Nomos Capital Partners Ltd. founder Mark Lowe said he sent a “robust” quotation of a Roman poet to a woman seeking help finding a job as a light-hearted joke.

Lowe testified today that Ariane Gordji, a former friend of his son, misunderstood a quotation in Latin he sent to her in response to an e-mail from her exhorting him, in Latin, to love his enemies. Lowe is being sued in a London employment tribunal for 4 million pounds ($6.6 million) by former employee Jordan Wimmer.

The words weren’t “explicit sexual material,” Lowe said under cross examination from Wimmer’s lawyer, Julian Wilson. “It was good humor. It was intended to be a joke. It’s funny.”

Wilson said the quotation created “a hostile working environment.”

Lowe said “there was no environment,” since Gordji never worked for him. He said he took her to a networking event in 2006 to help her find a job. Gordji, who now works for hedge fund Liongate Capital Management, told the tribunal about the e-mail “out of a spirit of gratuitous mischief-making,” Lowe said.

Lowe started his business raising money for European hedge funds including Madrid-based Vega Asset Management, which was once Europe’s largest hedge fund firm and doubled assets in 2004 to $11 billion. Vega, run by Ravinder Mehra, has since contracted after losses and investors redeeming their holdings. Lowe’s Nomos this year renamed the firm NCP Introductions.

Wimmer left the firm in February making a salary of 577,000 pounds a year. She earlier testified that Lowe subjected her to insults and harassment. Wimmer claimed that Lowe regularly took escorts on business trips and she suspected him of hiring a hit man to kill her after she left Nomos.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Lumley in London at jlumley1@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: November 23, 2009 10:22 EST