Practice

The Companies Court granted the defendant Royal Bank of Scotland’s application for an order to transfer proceedings brought by the claimant, Property Alliance Group Ltd, to the Financial List, notwithstanding that the claim was for less than £50m and that the transfer would result in a change of judge. It held that the allegations concerning, among other things, the alleged mis-selling of four interest rate swaps and, the alleged improper conduct of RBS in relation to the fixing of LIBOR rates involved important issues of general market significance and that a transfer into the Financial List satisfied the requirements of CPR 30.5, Practice Direction 63AA and the overriding objective. The court considered the applicable principles in deciding whether to accede to a contested application to transfer existing proceedings into the Financial List, where those proceedings satisfied the definition of “Financial List claim” in CPR 63A.1(2).