Osborne’s Eton pal sued for £15m after pinching 40,000 documents when he quit his job
A FORMER Eton schoolfriend of George Osborne is being sued for £15m after he took 40,000 confidential documents from an investment company manager and left to join a rival hedge fund.
Luke Bridgeman, who was a member of the infamous Bullingdon Club at Eton along with the former Chancellor, saved thousands of commercially valuable documents belonging to his employer Marathon Asset Management before embarking on the new venture, a court heard yesterday.
The 45-year-old, who graduated from New College Oxford with a double first in Classics and Russian, is the heir to the Viscount Bridgeman.
It is alleged that Bridgeman and friend James Seddon, who left Marathon in late 2012, used the files, which included confidential client information such as their likes and dislikes, to gain a competitive advantage.
Seddon, who admitted that he placed 33 documents from a Marathon computer on a USB memory stick for Bridgeman in 2012, has denied he had any knowledge his colleague had taken the files.
Bridgeman, who initially denied that he had taken the documents, came clean after electronic records showed he had accessed the files – though blamed his actions on the company’s ‘irrational’ work culture.
Yesterday, the pair appeared in the High Court to fight the claim against them made by Marathon Asset Management.
Bridgeman said: ‘I shouldn’t have taken them... My future looked bleak. But it was a strange time at Marathon, they were acting in an irrational way.’
Bridgeman added that he panicked when first asked whether he’d taken the files.
He said: ‘I was like a moth to the flame and I did not know what I was doing.’
Marathon was founded by investors Jeremy Hosking, Neil Ostrer and Bill Arah in 1986.
Marathon is claiming that by copying the documents, Bridgeman had an opportunity to exploit its vulnerability. It alleges he caused damage to the firm worth £15m, which is the cost of what the files would have been worth had he paid for them.
Bridgeman, who is currently on leave of absence, has also had his FCA licence withdrawn.
The hearing continues.