What is the test for a ‘one man company’?

Singularis Holdings Ltd (In Official Liquidation) (A Company Incorporated in the Cayman Islands) (Respondent) v Daiwa Capital Markets Europe Ltd (Appellant) concerns whether the dishonest state of mind of the sole shareholder and a director of a company is attributable to the company for the purposes of a claim in negligence against a third party bank or broker and, if so, what the consequences are of that attribution. The appeal was heard by Lady Hale, Lord Reed, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Sales and Lord Thomas last month. The appeal in relation to attribution raises the following questions (1) what is the test for a “one man company”? is it a company where every single shareholder and director is implicated in the fraud, irrespective of whether the directors were involved in the management of the company at any point in time; or a company that is wholly owned and controlled by a fraudulent sole shareholder and dominant director and/or by the only person involved in the management and ownership of the company? (2) upon whom does the burden of proof lie so far as the role of the other directors is concerned? does it lie upon the company on whose behalf the directors acted at the material time or upon the bank or broker? (3) in determining the question of attributionIs it relevant to consider whether the company had a legitimate business, and/or does the nature of the Quincecare duty lead to the conclusion that Mr Al Sanea’s fraudulent knowledge should not be attributed to the respondent? If Mr Al Sanea’s knowledge and fraudulent actions are attributable to the Respondent then the appeal raises a series of further questions.

These questions are (1) is the respondent’s claim defeated by lack of causation because the Quincecare duty does not extend to protecting the respondent from its own deliberate wrongdoing and/or because the respondent did not rely upon due performance of the Quincecare duty? (2) does the reasoning of Evans-Lombe J in Barings plc v Coopers & Lybrand (a firm) [2003] PNLR 34 apply where the respondent is primarily (as opposed to vicariously) liable for the actions of Mr Al Sanea? (3) how does the three stage test recently identified by the Supreme Court in Patel v Mirza [2016] 3 WLR 399 apply in this case? In particular: is the respondent’s claim contrary to public policy? does the existence of money laundering legislation and associated regulations provide a countervailing policy consideration in favour of allowing such a claim? would it be disproportionate to deny the claim because of the ability to make a deduction for contributory negligence on account of the respondent’s own contributory fault? The facts are that the appellant is the London subsidiary of a Japanese investment bank and brokerage firm. At the material time, the respondent was wholly owned by an individual called Maan Al Sanea (“Mr Al Sanea”), who was the company’s Chairman, President, Director and Treasurer.

Supreme Court Clarifies the Law on Security and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitration Awards

IPCO (Nigeria) Ltd v Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation [2017] UKSC 16 (1 March 2017)

These proceedings involved the question whether the appellant Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) should have put up a further $100m security in English enforcement proceedings connected to a Nigerian arbitration award for $152,195,971 plus 5m Nigerian Naira plus interest at 14% per annum arising out of an agreement under which IPCO (Nigeria) Limited (IPCO) contracted to design and construct a petroleum export terminal for NPCC. The Supreme Court unanimously allowed the appeal. Giving the sole judgment, Lord Mance reversed the Court of Appeal’s decision and imparted much needed guidance on the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996. He also said that rule 3.1(3) of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 was not relevant to the appeal. The recognition and enforcement of foreign awards is addressed by sections 100-104 of Part III of the 1996 Act and these provisions implement the UK’s obligations under the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958. Lord Mance explained that section 103, which sets out conditions for refusal of recognition of enforcement of awards under the Convention, was key to resolving this case. His Lordship construed the provision to hold that the court has no power to impose security when making orders under section 103(2) and section 103(3). Instead, only an order made under section 103(5) can be made conditional upon the provision of security by the award debtor.

IPCO is a turnkey contractor specialising in the construction of on-shore and offshore oil and gas facilities. The arbitration was conducted pursuant to a contract made in 1994 which was subject to Nigerian law and provided that disputes would be settled in accordance with the Nigerian Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1988. IPCO has been seeking to enforce the award in this jurisdiction since November 2004. In 2009, evidence tendered by a former IPCO employee enabled NPCC to challenge the entire award on the basis that IPCO inflated quantum by using fraudulent documentation. The English courts accept that NNPC has a good prima facie case regarding IPCO’s fraudulent behaviour and realistic prospects exist for the whole award to be set aside. NPCC’s challenges to the award are still pending in Nigeria for non-fraud and fraud reasons. Notably, however, NNPC’s application to amend its pleadings in the Nigerian proceedings to raise the fraud challenge was adjourned by consent and never determined.

FSMA and Third Party Rights: Victory for FCA in Supreme Court

Financial Conduct Authority (Appellant) v Macris (Respondent) [2017] UKSC 19 (22 March 2017)

The FCA emerged triumphant in this appeal and the outcome has altered the fortunes of persons regulated by the City watchdog. Reversing the Court of Appeal’s judgment, the Supreme Court held by majority that Mr Achilles Macris (M) had not been identified in the Final Notice given to JPMorgan Chase (JPMC). Accordingly, any “third party rights” under section 393 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) were not engaged because the notice did not identify M when interpreted by information readily available in the public domain. Lord Sumption found the analogy with the law of defamation to be unhelpful. Lord Mance said that this was “a difficult case” and Lord Neuberger said it was “difficult to resolve” the meaning of the word “identifies” in section 393(1)(a) despite the provision being a “good example” of Parliament’s enactment of generally lucid statutory language. Lord Wilson entered a note of dissent and he would have dismissed the FCA’s appeal. In 2012, the Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) operated by JPMC had lost $6.2bn because of the rogue “London Whale” trades. Because of the notorious losses the Final Notice entailed a financial penalty or “conduct costs” of £137.6m. Between 2012-2016 the world’s 20 foremost international banks paid a total of £264.03bn in conduct costs of which JPMC’s share was £33.64bn. As the head of the Chief Investment Office, which managed excess deposits including the portfolio comprising the SCP’s traded credit instruments, M’s functions as JPMC’s employee were “controlled functions” under section 59 of FSMA.

The losses were linked to high risk trading tactics, feeble management and failing to react to information alerting JPMC to the SCP’s problems. The appeal, explained Lord Sumption, turned on the meaning of “identifies” and on the meaning of the notice to which that word is being applied. The section 393 procedure aims to enable identified third parties, such as M, working in financial services firms to make representations to the regulator and take the matter to the Upper Tribunal (UT). Persons not party to regulatory settlement but discredited in enforcement notices are protected from unfair prejudice via the mechanism in section 393. A copy notice must be served to the third party but M was not given one. M had not been identified by name or job title but only as “CIO London management”. M argued that since he had already been identified by name in a US Senate Committee report on the SCP’s losses, the FCA notices enabled anyone to deduce the identity of the person known as “CIO London management”. M was not a party to the FCA’s settlement with JPMC. He was separately fined £762,900.

Early Redemption of ‘Cocos’: Win for LBG in Supreme Court

BNY Mellon Corporate Trustee Services Ltd v LBG Capital No 1 Plc & Anor [2016] UKSC 29 (16 June 2016)

Almost like the British public on Brexit, the Supreme Court remained closely divided on the issue of whether the Court of Appeal erred in its construction of the terms of enhanced capital notes (ECNs) by relying on technical and specialist information as part of the factual matrix. Formally described as ECNs, the loan notes were contingent convertible securities (or “Cocos”). Lord Neuberger (with whom Lord Mance and Lord Toulson agreed) dismissed BNY Mellon’s appeal whereas Lord Sumption (with whom Lord Clarke agreed) would have done otherwise. As Lord Sumption said in his brief note of dissent, the case was “of considerable financial importance to the parties” but it raised “no questions of wider legal significance”. The outcome in the case is a major blow for investors (receiving up to 16pc interest) who had hoped that the court would not have held that the terms of the bonds (or ECNs) allowed Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) to redeem them early at face value. The High Court found in favour of the bondholders but the Court of Appeal reversed that decision, one that the Supreme Court has upheld: albeit not without doubts and dissent. Led by Mark Taber, the bondholders disputed that the ECNs had been disqualified as capital and resorted to litigation. A disgruntled Taber said that the division between the justices “raises massive issues over the role of the regulators”.

He is particularly aggrieved that the court’s judgment does not engage with the arguments aired about statutory requirements that bond prospectuses must be accurate and provide crystal clear information to investors so that they may make informed choices and decisions. Worse still Taber also complains that he lobbied the FCA’s new boss Andrew Bailey to make germane information – about the exact scope of the regulator and LBG’s knowledge about impending changes to capital requirements when the ECNs were issued – available to the court. But since his request was not granted, he argues that because the courts are not willing to intervene it must be the City regulator’s job to interpret the prospectuses. “I believe the changes they knew about, which were not disclosed in the ECN prospectus, meant that a capital disqualification event was a certainty at the time the ECNs were issued. If the court had been told this I think it would have made a difference,” is how Taber expressed his frustration with the situation. However, his claim appears to directly contradict even Lord Sumption’s dissenting judgment that despite its financial importance the appeal contained no legally significant questions of wider importance.

“Land Banks” and Collective Investment Schemes: Supreme Court on s.235, FSMA

Asset Land Investment Plc & Anor v The Financial Conduct Authority [2016] UKSC 17 (20 April 2016)

The Financial Conduct Authority is in the news a lot these days. Andrew Bailey has been handpicked to head the agency but the chancellor George Osborne has come under fire for making the appointment without conducting a formal interview, thereby sidestepping the two candidates (Tracey McDermott and Greg Medcraft from Down Under) formally on the shortlist. However, the beleaguered FCA chairman John Griffith-Jones agreed with outgoing chief executive McDermott and both of them were “happy” with the chancellor’s appointment of Bailey – a beefy looking BoE insider who impressively holds a doctorate in economic history. As seen in the last post, Panama has been in the news a lot. The FCA had originally given 20 banks until 15 April 2016 to report on the extent, if any, of their involvement and links with Mossack Fonseca or firms serviced by them. But now it warns that prosecutions over the Panama Papers are not clear-cut. According to Mark Steward, head of enforcement, the media frenzy is “quite different from prosecutions – the two don’t necessarily go together”. This case involved a Panamanian corporation called Asset LI Inc trading as Asset Land Investment plc against which the FCA brought proceedings for carrying on “regulated activities” without authorisation contrary to the general prohibition in section 19 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Schemes for investing in land with development potential are commonly known as “land banks” and the operation of such initiatives first came into the regulatory perimeter under section 11 of the PERG Manual of the FCA Handbook.  

In Financial Services Authority v Fradley [2005] EWCA Civ 1183, the Court of Appeal had described the drafting of section 235 (collective investment schemes) of FSMA as “open-textured” by virtue of which words such as “arrangements” and “property of any description” are to be given “a wide meaning”. Arden LJ found in Fradley that section 235 must not be construed so as to include matters which are not fairly within it because contravening section 19 may result in the commission of criminal offences, subject to section 23(3) of FSMA. Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill found her Ladyship’s approach to be “helpful guidance”. On the other hand, he remained cautious of drawing analogies from comparative Commonwealth legislation presented to the court – such as the Australian Corporations Act 2001 – on the ground that differences in drafting warranted keeping the discussion strictly within the boundaries of UK statutes and authorities. Like the first instance judge, the Supreme Court referred to the English and the Panamanian company indiscriminately as “Asset Land”.

Supreme Court on the ‘Houdini Taxpayer’

UBS AG & Deutsche Bank v Revenue and Customs [2016] UKSC 13 (9 March 2016)

As infamously explained by jailed fraudster Tom Hayes, UBS must be credited with issuing a “handbook” on rigging LIBOR. Doubling Hayes up, in the ongoing LIBOR trial, Jonathan Mathew, one of five charged Barclays traders, says that he was merely following orders and just did what his boss taught/told him to do. The five men say everyone in the big banks “knew LIBOR was rigged”. As seen in an earlier post, along with Barclays traders, Deutsche Bank traders are facing criminal charges for EURIBOR manipulation and proceedings are ongoing in the case of R v Christian Bittar & Ors – first appearances were made at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 11 January 2016 and a mention hearing was held on 18 March 2016. Former Deutsche trader Martyn Dodgson has also been convicted for insider trading in Operation Tabernula. In the instant case, echoing Templeman LJ in W T Ramsay Ltd v Inland Revenue Comrs [1979] 1 WLR 974, Lord Reed described UBS and Deutsche Bank’s behaviour as “the most sophisticated attempts of the Houdini taxpayer to escape from the manacles of tax.” The banks, which Lord King calls “the Achilles heel of capitalism”, may be disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling but most people will only be too delighted that top executives should become acquainted with some degree of retributive justice. The dry issue of tax is a hot political topic these days and the Panama Papers (see here) culminated in calls for the prime minister to resign for being a hypocrite.

Though this post is about the Supreme Court’s judgment, I use the opportunity to discursively expose other important tax issues reported in the media. Of course, Deutsche Bank announced last October that it would axe 9,000 full-time jobs and it has just recent lost its global position as a top-three investment bank. Research from Coalition, that ranks global investment banks by total revenue from fees and trading, shows that Citigroup and Bank of America are ahead of Deutsche Bank. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs retained their positions in first and second place respectively. Tim Wallace writes in today’s The Sunday Telegraph that once a cash cow, investment banking is now is serious crisis and jobs and pay across the sector has declined. It is a vicious cycle and the following insightful analogy is invoked “shrinking an investment bank is hard. It is like unravelling a jumper – once you start pulling on the thread it is hard to stop … then all of a sudden, you haven’t got a jumper at all.”

Navinder Sarao: ‘Flash Crash’ Trader’s Extradition Request Upheld

The Government of the United States of America v Navinder Singh Sarao (23 March 2016)

The case of Nav Sarao, the “hound of Hounslow” who faces a potential sentence of 380 years’ imprisonment on 22 counts in the US, has inflamed emotions and commentators have expressed extreme sympathy with the rogue trader who is considered to be the main culprit behind the “flash crash” of 6 May 2010. The disproportionate nature of his predicament is clearly illustrated by the fact that if extradited and punished in America, Sarao may well receive a harsher sentence than Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadic who got 40 years for crimes against humanity and genocide but will enjoy the right to a lengthy appeals process. It has been argued that Sarao had to be caged because he discovered a way to beat the HFTs at their own game. At the time of his arrest, senior traders even made public statements about footing his legal bill. Seldom has a corporate crime case aroused such a passionate response. Fellow traders dubbed Sarao “our spoofing hero” and the case against him was labelled “ridiculous”. Yet in the Westminster magistrates’ court judge Quentin Purdy disagreed and found that Sarao was extraditable to the US on the charges levelled against him. On the other hand, in making factual findings in the case, judge Purdy found that the downturn in the market was not attributable to a single event and the cause of the flash crash “cannot on any view be laid wholly or mostly at Navinder Sarao’s door” because even though he was active on 6 May 2010 the date “is only a single trading day in over 400 relied upon by the prosecution.”

Against this, the Commodities Trading Futures Commission accuses the Brit of exacerbating the flash crash and claims he “was at least significantly responsible for the order imbalances” in the derivatives market which affected stock markets to make matters worse on the day. The judge found that if found guilty of market abuse under UK law, Sarao’s activity would result in a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment being imposed on him and so the dual criminality test in section 137 of the Extradition Act 2003 was satisfied. He also stressed the importance of the public interest in upholding the controversial UK-US Extradition Treaty. Sarao is accused of engaging in a ferocious campaign to manipulate the price of the E-mini S&P 500 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by relying on a variety of exceptionally large, aggressive and persistent spoofing tactics.

Narratives of Misconduct: Emerging Trends in the Finance Sector

As seen on this blog, the spectre of misconduct hangs over the finance sector. Even after seven painful years of conduct related revelations, the fall out from the global financial crisis (GFC) continues to haunt consumers and banking institutions alike. To conceal the low-point in public confidence, empty rhetoric and hollow buzzwords such as “social licence” and “real markets” reign supreme while regulatory spin seeks to reconstruct the common person’s trust in the system. Equally, to make themselves palatable to the public, market pundits can be heard trumpeting the mantra of “inclusive capitalism”. Yet an overall lack of ethics permeates corporate culture and a continuing tendency to act in a twisted way can still be gleaned from events. If anything, the deficit in trust is increasing because resort to outright cheating can still be evinced in numerous instances. For example, along with Deutsche Bank, Barclays is in the spotlight yet again after paying £320 million in forex manipulation fines to the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) earlier this May; today, it has been fined £72 million by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for poor handling of financial crime risks. Equally, The Review into the failure of HBOS Group highlights the legacy of negligence in holding the finance sector to account. In addition to everyday outrage arising out of economic inequality, public anger in the finance sector has risen to a crescendo because the nadir of people’s sufferings has been reached. As the National Audit Office finds, state funds totalling £1,162 billion have been injected into the UK banking system to save it from collapse.

The paradox, of course, is that unlimited funds have been made available to rescue recklessly managed and overexposed banks – concerned less with integrity and more with ways to exploit token regulation – whereas the neediest in society are being shunned from basic necessities such as healthcare, care services, welfare and all the savage cuts that accompany the long-term goal of shrinking the state to 36% of GDP. Even to those who earnestly believe in the free market, official viewpoints and narratives often directly contradict reality. Most of all, officials fail to acknowledge wholesale abdication of duties owed to citizens and their attitude exposes a continuing tendency to overlook capitalism’s corruption. In the roundup below, among other things, further light is shed on developments trending in the bullring of financial misconduct and the theoretical jargon used by regulators is paired up with a cogent critique – by O’Brien, Gilligan, Roberts and McCormick – of the trickle down reforms enacted to positively anchor the finance sector to society’s needs.

Former Rogue UBS Trader Kweku Adoboli Loses Deportation Appeal

In comparison to Tom Hayes (who got 14 years’ imprisonment and is appealing his sentence and conviction) and others being prosecuted for benchmark rigging, it is arguably quite scandalous that UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli (who was convicted of two counts of fraud and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment) was released from prison after spending just a bit over three years behind bars for losing $2.5 billion in unauthorised trading. Ghana-born Adoboli – who travelled the world as a child – is said to be the son of a United Nations official/diplomat. Because of his misconduct, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) understandably wishes to ban Adoboli, who reckoned he had a “magic touch”, from being a regulated person in financial services. But now it has emerged that Adoboli was notified of his liability to deportation and has lost his appeal in relation to the decision to deport him from the UK. The 35-year old Ghanaian national, who has resided in the UK for 23 years but never got around to obtaining British nationality, was released from prison in June 2015 and reportedly found the immigration tribunal’s decision upholding his deportation to be “heartbreaking”. His rogue trading wiped off £2.7 billion ($4.5 billion) from UBS’s share price.

The media suggests that the former public school head boy and University of Nottingham graduate – holding a degree in e-commerce and digital business studies – plans to appeal the tribunal’s decision. It has been reported that the home office only seeks to deport individuals whose sentence is longer than four years (Immigration Rules, Part 13, Deportation and Article 8, para 398(a)) unless they are able to demonstrate otherwise. (A sentence of four years’ imprisonment or more means the person is a serious criminal and “very compelling circumstances” is an extremely high threshold. As a general principle, the greater the public interest in deporting the foreign criminal, the more compelling the foreign criminal’s circumstances must be in order to outweigh it.) However, under para 398(b) the deportation of a person from the UK is conducive to the public good and in the public interest where they have been convicted of an offence for which they have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of less than four years but at least 12 months. It is common knowledge that anyone who has been convicted of an offence exceeding 12 months’ imprisonment is caught by “automatic deportation” because after the foreign national prisoners crisis the government legislated in

Is the door to England still that wide open for CIS disputes?

Guest Post by AstapovLawyers International Law Group

6 February 2013 has marked lawyers’ calendars with an important message from the UK Supreme Court: English courts will not accept the jurisdiction over a dispute which has its “centre of gravity” in another country. In particular, the Supreme Court found that in a tort claim, where the key issues in the litigation would on the face of it be factual not legal, law governing the tort was of very little, if any, potency for the purposes of defining the appropriate forum. The Supreme Court also refused to invoke non-exclusive jurisdiction clauses in favour of English courts noting that the connection with another country was of such strength and importance that England could not be said to be clearly or distinctly the appropriate forum.

For the reasons explained below, Lord Neuberger PSC and Lord Mance, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson and Lord Reed JJSC upheld the lower courts’ judgments dismissing the jurisdiction of English courts and claims on piercing the corporate veil in the widely reported case of VTB Capital plc (Appellant) v Nutritek International Corp and others (Respondents) [2013] UKSC 5. (On appeal from [2012] EWCA Civ 808 and [2011] EWHC 3107 (Ch) respectively.) See case preview on this blog here.