A claim brought by shareholders against Standard Chartered has tested key questions in the securities litigation space, including around market/price reliance and dishonest delay. In this short article, Harry McGowan and Lorraine Lanceley provide a brief update on the latest key development in this case.
On 25 March 2025, Mr Justice Green handed down his judgment dismissing Standard Chartered’s application to strike out or grant reverse summary judgment of certain claims in Various Claimants v Standard Chartered PLC [2025] EWHC 698 (Ch). On 9 July 2025 the Court of Appeal granted Standard Chartered permission to appeal Mr Justice Green’s decision.
As we reported at the time, Mr Justice Green’s first instance decision was a key one, it being the first to follow Mr Justice Leech’s judgment in Allianz Funds Multi-Strategy Trust and ors v Barclays plc [2024] EWHC 2710 (Ch) in which he struck out all claims based on market/price reliance and concluded that future publication of delayed information is a requirement for dishonest delay.
While Mr Justice Green’s decision only postponed consideration of these issues to trial (currently due to take place in autumn 2026), it was still applauded by claimant lawyers for allowing the relevant claims to continue and arguably adopting a more balanced, reasonable and logical approach to the key issues of market/price reliance and dishonest delay, thereby casting doubt on the Barclays judgment.
Mr Justice Green’s judgment also supported the long-held position that novel, developing and complex legal questions are not suitable to be decided at an interim stage in the proceedings. Rather, they are better to be decided “on the basis of the actual facts, rather than assumed or hypothetical facts”.
In May 2025, Standard Chartered applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal Mr Justice Green’s judgment and, as noted above, on 9 July 2025, permission was granted. It is currently unclear when the appeal hearing will take place.
What comes next?
It is too soon to try to predict which way the Court of Appeal may go or what the impact of its decision may be, although it is safe to say the appeal will be followed closely by securities litigators on both sides. Mr Justice Green commented in the conclusion to his judgment that the parties “may well need to look at their pleadings in relation to both [the common reliance and delay claims]” as it seemed to him there were “a number of potential deficiencies in the way they have been drafted”. So, it seems inevitable that both parties will look to amend their pleadings ahead of any Court of Appeal hearing in order to put their best foot forward.
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