Where a lender has the absolute discretion to do something under a loan, their position will be protected according to the recent High Court decision in UBS AG v Rose Capital Ventures Limited, Dr Vijay Mallya, Mrs Lalitha Mallya, Mr Sidartha Vijay Mallya [2018] EWHC 3137 (Ch). The Court provided some comfort to secured (and possibly, by extension, unsecured) lenders by confirming that the “Braganza duty” will not generally apply where a lender is entitled to perform…

A Norwich Pharmacal Order (“NPO“) forces a third party to disclose documents or information to an applicant. These Court orders are typically used to identify a proper defendant to a claim or to get information to enable someone to set out their case in Court documents. The respondent to an NPO application is generally not the defendant to the potential proceedings but they must be somehow mixed up in the wrongdoing (innocently or otherwise).…

In light of rapid developments in the market, the substantial potential of applications of distributed ledger technology (DLT), and growing evidence of the risks associated with cryptoassets; the Chancellor of the Exchequer launched the Cryptoassets Taskforce, comprising HM Treasury (HMT), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England (BoE), in March 2018 as part of the government’s Fintech Sector Strategy. Their report, now published, sets out proposals for the UK’s policy and…

The Upper Tribunal, the independent Court that hears appeals from FCA decisions, last week upheld the regulator’s decision to fine Stewart Ford, the former CEO of Keydata Investment Services Limited, a huge £76million (the largest FCA fine on an individual) and ban him from working in the financial services industry. The Tribunal decided that the FCA had been correct to ban and fine Mr Ford for a lack of integrity, and for failing to deal with the regulator in an open way after he…

The recent High Court decision in Lonsdale v. National Westminster Bank plc [2018] EWHC 1842 (QB) serves to highlight that the content of a suspicious activity report (“SAR”) could be discloseable to an opponent in Court proceedings. Not only that – it could also form the basis of a claim in defamation.…

The recent High Court decision in Caribonum Pension Trustee Limited v Pelikan Hardcopy Production AG [2018] EWHC 2321 (Ch) will provide some comfort for pension plan trustees owed money by insolvent sponsoring employers by allowing trustees to pursue guarantors within the same group for those debts. What was contended to be an abuse of Court process has been confirmed by the Court as a legitimate debt recovery strategy. This was on the basis that a contractual…

Last month, the House of Commons Treasury Committee published its report on crypto-assets. The report expresses serious concerns about the risks of consumer harm and financial crime and calls for regulation “as a matter of urgency“.…