Barclays fights disclosure request

PCP Capital demands bank hands over legal advice ahead of court battle on 2008 capital raising

Amanda Staveley’s private equity firm is demanding that Barclays hand over up to 1,000 documents ahead of a £1.5bn High Court battle over emergency fundraising by the bank at the height of the financial crisis.

PCP Capital, which was founded by the financier, is suing Barclays for alleged deceit over its arrangements with Qatar for two emergency fundraisings in 2008 that allowed it to avoid a UK government bailout. 

Barclays denies wrongdoing and is defending the lawsuit which is due to be heard at London’s High Court starting on June 8.

The case treads similar ground to a criminal trial brought by the Serious Fraud Office against three former Barclays executives, all of whom were acquitted in February.

The three were cleared of charges that they lied to the market about Qatari investors secretly being paid £322m via two “side deals” — known as advisory services agreements — in return for investment in two capital raisings in June and November of that year. The defendants told the trial that everything they did was in line with external and internal legal advice.

Ms Staveley put together an investment by Abu Dhabi in a Barclays’ fundraising in October 2008 but said she would not have done so if she had known about the Qatar side deals.

On Friday, PCP asked the High Court to order Barclays to hand over documents detailing the legal advice given to the bank in 2008 by its external and internal lawyers on the advisory services agreements with Qatar.

PCP claims Barclays has in effect waived legal privilege on the side deals with Qatar because its defence places “extensive reliance” on the legal advice, which is a “central plank of its defence to PCP’s claim”. 

“It is common ground that only a selection of the communications between Barclays and its lawyers are before the court. Barclays wishes to rely on that selection whilst withholding the remainder. That is wrong in law and in principle,” James Collins QC, representing PCP, claimed in written arguments. 

“How can Barclays’ witnesses give evidence about the legal advice they did or did not receive — and be cross-examined about it — if PCP and the court can only see part of the record?” he said, adding that Barclays “wishes to hold back what it says might be over a thousand more documents”.

Barclays claims the documents are legally privileged and is resisting the application. Richard Lissack QC, representing Barclays, told the High Court on Friday it should reject PCP’s application which was “bad in law” and “is an ask for far too much, far too late”.

He said that Barclays was simply relying on the content of legal documents that had been used in the recent criminal trial which were no longer legally privileged. 

“What we have done is to take publicly available unprivileged material from the trial and deployed it just as PCP can,” Mr Lissack told the court. In his written arguments he claimed “there is no reference to, or reliance on, the content of a privileged communication so as to cross the threshold for a waiver of privilege.” The court is expected to rule on PCP’s application on Monday.