- with readers working within the Securities & Investment industries
- within Wealth Management, Technology and Employment and HR topic(s)
- with Inhouse Counsel
The High Court has ordered the adjournment of a securities class action brought under s.90 and/or s.90A and Schedule 10A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which was listed to begin in October 2026 and would have been the first such claim to proceed to trial (previous cases having settled before trial): Aabar Holdings SARL v Glencore plc [2026] EWHC 1328 (Comm).
The central question before the court was how the civil trial should proceed given the substantial overlap with the pending criminal prosecution. There is no rule that civil proceedings must be adjourned or stayed in favour of criminal proceedings (in order to avoid the risk of the criminal proceedings being prejudiced by overlapping issues being considered by the civil courts). However, the court must consider the risk of injustice arising in the criminal proceedings, and whether that risk can be mitigated by the imposition of sufficient safeguards in the civil proceedings.
The adjournment was ordered partly in light of restrictions sought by the Serious Fraud Office in relation to the conduct of the trial. While the court was not persuaded that a trial subject to those restrictions would be unworkable, it accepted that they would be inconvenient and a substantial derogation from the principle of open justice. Further, there was a real risk that those restrictions would fail and prejudice the criminal proceedings in any event.
This is a significant decision in the context of securities class actions, as the adjournment will delay the possibility of any findings against the defendant at trial. Notably, the court did not order a stay of the proceedings overall, on the basis that issues due to be dealt with at trial 2 (relating to the individual claimants' cases) could be progressed in the meantime and potentially included in a deferred trial 1. That possibility may fundamentally affect the allocation of litigation risk between the parties.
For further details, see this post on our Banking Litigation Notes blog.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
[View Source]
