Staveley claims she feels vindicated despite losing Barclays lawsuit and threat of millions in costs
Judge says bank was ‘guilty of serious deceit’, but stops short of ordering damages to ‘clever entrepreneur’
AMANDA STAVELEY, the financier, has said she feels vindicated and suggested she will fight on after losing one of the most high-profile British lawsuits to come out of the financial crisis.
In a High Court ruling, a judge found that Barclays was “guilty of serious deceit” in the way it treated her as she scrambled to secure support from Abu Dhabi investors in an emergency 2008 fundraising drive to prevent a taxpayer bailout of the lender.
However, he refused her claim for more than £600million in damages as he said there was no real chance Ms Staveley would be paid the fees which she claimed that Barclays’ deception had cost her.
Mr Justice Waksman criticised Barclays for attempts to discredit Ms Staveley as a lightweight “chancer” who engaged in a “hustle” to get involved in the deal. He said she was a “tough, clever and creative entrepreneur”.
Ms Staveley said: “In spite of Bar
clays’ efforts to question my character and credentials, the court has recognised my abilities as a businesswoman.”
She is taking advice on appealing the judge’s decision not to award damages.
The next move will be to decide who pays legal expenses, with a costs hearing expected to take place soon and many millions of pounds at stake. Ms Staveley sued the bank after her contact, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who she helped buy Manchester City FC, contributed £3.5billion to a blockbuster deal from Middle Eastern investors in 2008 that saved Barclays from the hands of the Government. She claimed her firm, PCP Capital Partners, was treated unfairly because it did not receive the same fees as other Qatari investors, and sought damages of around £660million. Barclays said she was only an adviser rather than an investor.
During the trial it emerged that senior Barclays bankers had dismissed Ms Staveley as a “dollybird” and called her “the tart” at the time of the fundraising.
Stephen Jones, one of the Barclays bankers, resigned as head of banking lobby group, UK Finance, over remarks he made about her 12 years ago that were revealed in court. The ruling found that another, Roger Jenkins, viewed as the gatekeeper to the bank’s relationship with Qatari investors, gave the impression to Ms Staveley that she would get the same deal as Qatar when he “knew perfectly well” that was not the case.
Ms Staveley said the judgment “confirms what I have said from the outset and repeated in my evidence; a senior executive at Barclays repeatedly lied to me when seeking private investment in the bank during the 2008 financial crisis”.
She added: “The evidence at trial was clear and unequivocal; PCP was an investor in the transaction and played an integral role in the capital raising, which ultimately prevented the bank from being nationalised.”
Ms Staveley’s case meant that events that led to the crucial fundraising resurfaced yet again in a London court.
A criminal trial brought by the Serious Fraud Office collapsed last year after a jury took just five hours to acquit three former Barclays bankers on all counts.
A parallel case against Barclays itself was also thrown out in 2018, while a criminal case against John Varley, former Barclays’ chief executive, was dismissed in 2019 by the Court of Appeal.
During the trial Ms Staveley, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew and who last year led a Saudi bid to buy Newcastle United FC, said she felt she was only invited to a party hosted by Mr Jenkins and attended by George Clooney in an attempt by the bank to cut her out and get direct access to Sheikh Mansour.
A Barclays spokesman said: “We welcome the court’s decision to dismiss PCP’S claim in its entirety and award it no damages.”