A group of institutional investors organised and funded by Woodsford has been given the green light to proceed to trial. 

Various Claimants v Standard Chartered PLC – [2025] EWHC 698 (Ch) 

Institutional investors who have collectively suffered losses in excess of £1.5bn, arising from disclosures of corporate governance failures at Standard Chartered PLC, have succesfully resisted an attempt by the the UK-listed multinational bank to strike out a signifcant portion of their group claim. This is the second occasion on which this group of investors has resisted an attempt by Standard Chartered to strike-out their claim. On the first occasion, the Court of Appeal also agreed with the first-instance judge in his dismissal of the strike-out application.

The Investors’ Claim & Standard Chartered’s Application

The investors are pursuing claims pursuant to s90 and s90A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA). They suffered losses in share value following disclosures of repeated failures of the bank to deal with its facilitation of US dollar transactions involving Iranian or Iran-linked entities and breaches of accompanying US-authority deferred prosecution agreements.

Standard Chartered, the defendant in the proceedings, sought to strike out the “Common Reliance” claims of 949 funds representing 68% of the total number of funds and with a claim value of over £760 million. These claims are often described as claims based on “indirect reliance” and they assume that an investor, or their agent, has not read or considered the relevant published information, but has relied on the market to have set the share price having taken account of the published information alleged to be untrue or misleading. This interpretation of “reliance” is key to investors such as passive funds having recourse for untrue/misleading published information under UK securities laws, specifically s90A, FSMA 2000.

The Judgment

The High Court has however dismissed the defendant’s application meaning that, unless the action settles, those claimants’ claims will now advance to trial alongside the rest of the group pursuing “Individual Reliance” and prospectus liability claims.

In his judgment, Green J expressed doubt as to whether an earlier decision in an action pursued by investors also organised and funded by Woodsford, Various Claimants v Barclays plc [2024] EWHC 2710 (Ch), was correctly decided. In that case, Leech J decided that certain claimants had no real prospect of succeeding at trial in proving “reliance”, on the basis that this would require “the claimant to prove that they read or heard the representation, that they understood it in the sense which they allege was false and that it caused them to act in a way which caused them loss”, and those claimants had indicated a different type of reliance.

Green J, in this application, concluded that he “did not think that it is as clear as perhaps Leech J saw it and that it is a developing area that has potentially a huge impact on a number of different claims. There are factual matters that, in my view, require determination and the expert evidence might assist in understanding the extent to which the Published Information would have affected the market price and its influence therefore on the decisions made by the Claimants.”

What next?

The Standard Chartered decision is an important development in English securities litigation, as it allows investors, in particular those with passive strategies, who have not directly read or heard a company’s misrepresentations, to plead “fraud on the market” reliance and thus still pursue redress under s.90A FSMA and Schedule 10A FSMA where companies have made untrue or misleading statements in published information.

With the assistance of Woodsford’s funding, and in the absence of settlement, the investors will continue to pursue their claims through to trial currently listed for October 2026.

Woodsford will continue to assist institutional investors in their efforts to seek accountability from the companies they invest in and compensation for losses suffered.

To read the judgment in full click here.

If you have any queries in relation to the Standard Chartered matter feel free to email David Haughan, the Invesment Officer with conduct of the matter.