Introduction In Lehman Brothers Special Financing Inc. v National Power Corporation and another [2018], the Commercial Court was tasked with evaluating the mechanism for calculating “close-out amounts” in transactions for derivatives under the 2002 International Swaps and Derivatives Association Master Agreement (“2002 ISDA”). The 2002 ISDA is a standard market agreement used to set out the … Continue Reading
Last month the Supreme Court decided, on an appeal from the Scottish Inner House of Court of Session, that a borrower’s solicitors did not assume responsibility for, and thereby owe a duty of care to, the other side (the financier) in a commercial transaction.… Continue Reading
Over 25 years ago, the case of Barclays Bank Plc v Quincecare [1992] 4 All ER 363 established that a bank owes a duty of care to both its customer and third parties to protect against fraud. In summary, a bank will be liable if it has reasonable grounds for believing that a payment it … Continue Reading
In recent judicial review (“JR“) proceedings, R (on the application of Kelly ) (Claimants) v Financial Ombudsman Service & Shawbrook Bank (Interested Party) (2017), the High Court quashed a Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) decision to dismiss a husband and wife’s complaint involving a lender and the interested party bank (“IPB”). The Court decided that the FOS had misunderstood the nature … Continue Reading
The Court has recently handed down judgment in Abdullah and others v Credit Suisse (UK) Limited and Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited, a case concerning the suitability of structured product sales .… Continue Reading
It has recently been reported that the European Commission carried out a series of dawn raids at the premises of a number of entities involved in the banking sector “in a few” EU member states including, reportedly, the Polish and Dutch Banking Associations. The raids related to the alleged delay by banks providing data requested … Continue Reading
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Taurus Petroleum Ltd (Appellant) v State Oil Marketing Company of the Ministry of Oil, Republic of Iraq (Respondent) [2017] clarifies where a debt is situated under a letter of credit (“LoC”). … Continue Reading
Further to our recent blog posts regarding the long running litigation, last week the Supreme Court ordered that permission to appeal be granted to the Claimants in MasterCard Incorporated and others (Respondents) v Deutsche Bahn AG and others (Appellants) – UKSC 2017/0095. The appeal concerns prospective amendments to the Claimants’ case in the litigation which would introduce new claims … Continue Reading
On 6 October 2017, the Court of Appeal ruled that an investor with an interest in promissory notes cannot sue the issuing bank for allegedly making misleading statements about those promissory notes. There was no contractual relationship; only the bearer of the promissory notes could sue the issuer for breach of contract.… Continue Reading
As discussed in a previous blog (3 May 2017), consumers seeking compensation in relation to any new payment protection insurance (“PPI“) complaint will now have until 29 August 2019 to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service about any alleged mis-selling by lenders. The Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA“) has announced the final deadline in an attempt to draw … Continue Reading
Background The Court of Appeal has this week handed down judgment in three linked appeals (CGL Group and Others v Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and Others). These concerned interest rate hedging products (“Hedging Products“) that certain smaller businesses (including the Appellants) allege they were required to buy as a condition of loans made to them by three banks (in … Continue Reading
Claims’ Management Companies (“CMCs”) offer legal claims and complaint management services to members of the public. Historically, CMCs work to bring large numbers of complaints against financial services companies and recent areas of focus have been PPI and interest rate hedging mis-selling complaints. Whilst some CMCs are reputable, others try to rally business through unsolicited calls/texts … Continue Reading
On 4 July 2017, the Prudential Regulation Authority (“PRA”) released a statement on consumer credit (“Statement”), following a review of consumer credit lending (“PRA Review”). The review included the examination of PRA regulated firms’ underwriting practices for credit cards, unsecured personal loans and motor finance. As readers will be aware, there has been a good deal … Continue Reading
The UK Government appears for the time being at least to have scrapped plans to merge the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) with the National Crime Agency (“NCA”). The controversial proposal to abolish the SFO did not feature in the Queen’s Speech, suggesting that it has been put on the back burner following the failure of Prime Minister … Continue Reading
In a previous blog post, we discussed how the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA“) was backing a call by the banks for the introduction of a two year cut-off for PPI claims. Deadline The FCA has now announced that the final deadline for making a new PPI complaint will be 29 August 2019. Andrew Bailey (Chief … Continue Reading
Financial institutions often receive a subject access request made under the Data Protection Act 1998 (“SAR”) from individual customers as pre-cursor to a formal complaint or a legal claim. That is because a SAR enables the customer to access a significant amount of information held by the organisation about him or her. A customer can … Continue Reading
AIG Europe Limited v Woodman and others [2017] UKSC 18 Supreme Court clarifies the correct interpretation of the aggregation clause contained in the Solicitors’ Minimum Terms and Conditions of Insurance (“MTC”) in what will be considered a partial victory for insurers.… Continue Reading
The recent case of R (Aviva Life and Pensions) v Financial Ombudsman Service discusses and reaffirms the position that the Financial Ombudsman is not bound to follow the law when making its determinations but must instead make decisions that are “fair and reasonable in all the circumstances”. This reaffirms the Court of Appeal decision in R (Heather Moor … Continue Reading
After a 38 day trial, Mrs Justice Asplin handed down a 187 page judgment just before Christmas in the long-running Property Alliance Group Ltd v The Royal Bank of Scotland plc case. She rejected claims of mis-selling, breach of good faith obligations and misrepresentations associated with LIBOR. Property Alliance Group sued RBS over four interest … Continue Reading
Mr Marsden was in the business of buying, restoring and selling pubs and hotels, financed by loans from Barclays. In July 2006 he entered into an interest rate swap with the bank to hedge floating rate loans of £1.6 million advanced to buy two pubs in Suffolk and Derby (£750,000 and £850,000 respectively). The swap … Continue Reading
In our blog post “Shift towards a PPI cut-off deadline reported” (24 June), we explained that internal documents had revealed that the FCA was backing a call by banks for the introduction of a two year cut-off for new PPI claims. The official FCA announcement was made on 2 August 2016. It confirmed that the … Continue Reading
Forex hit the headlines once again in late July, after the arrest of HSBC global head of forex cash trading (Mark Johnson) at JFK airport in New York. The US Department of Justice alleges that Mr Johnson (and Stuart Scott, who was HSBC’s head of forex cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa … Continue Reading
For the next in our breakfast roundtable series, Laurence Winston and I will be joined by intelligence and investigations specialists James Stothard and Damian Ozenbrook of Blue Square Global to look at tracing and recovering stolen assets. Following on from our well-received recent roundtable session on how to react to a cyber-theft or fraud, we … Continue Reading
Background The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) hears references from decisions and supervisory notices issued by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) and other specified regulators. In this case three references were made by two former employees of Deutsche Bank (Messrs Bittar and Vogt) and a former Barclays Bank employee (Mr Moryoussef). The references related … Continue Reading
