Barristers at One Essex Court have significant experience in relation to claims against a wide range of professionals, whether for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of trust, negligence, misfeasance or breach of contract.
A considerable amount of our expertise in this area focuses on the work of financial services professionals, including accountants, actuaries, bankers and financial advisors and covers the audit of companies, business advice, the mis-selling of investment products and ratings and valuations. In addition, we have also acted in relation to disputes concerning solicitors negligence.
Work undertaken here tends to be centred on high profile, substantial and complex disputes. Recent and ongoing work includes Cattles v PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a claim for £1.6bn in relation to the audit of a financial services group and Hewlett Packard v Lynch in a claim for £3.4bn in relation to HP’s acquisition of British software company Autonomy.
Historic work in this sector has included auditors negligence claims flowing from the collapse of Barings Bank; the pension fund management dispute between Unilever and Mercury Asset Management; the actions brought by Equitable Life against its auditors and directors; the pension fund dispute between Socpen and UBS; and the claim by London Underground Limited against its former lawyers.