Kim Potts comments on Ex-JPMorgan trader losing prejudice claim against financial watchdog in The Times Law Brief, FT Adviser and Law360

The Court of Appeal dismissed a claim yesterday from Julien Grout, a French junior trader at JP Morgan during the “London Whale” trading scandal, that the watchdog proceedings against him had been prejudiced.

Kim Potts, a lawyer at the London law firm Corker Binning, said:

“The Court of Appeal’s ruling in the case of Julien Grout is another success for the FCA in the long running third party rights litigation that has ensued from individuals following the high profile London Whale case and other major bank regulatory settlements, in which individuals involved in the conduct admitted by the bank were anonymised. The individuals argued that they could still be identified and had been prejudiced. 

“Despite the previous views of the Upper Tribunal that Mr Grout had been identified in the FCA’s 2013 Decision Notice against JPMorgan, and that certain parts of it were prejudicial to him, the Court of Appeal has disagreed.

“After the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the FCA last year in a long running case brought by another JPMorgan trader, Achilles Macris, the decision of the Court of Appeal is unsurprising. The decision re-affirms the message to all individuals working in the financial markets that unless they are able to present very strong evidence that an FCA Notice identifies them to the public at large, they will face a significant difficulty in enforcing their third party rights.  

“Had Mr Grout and his colleague Mr Macris been ultimately successful in their challenges, this would have led to a very significant burden for the FCA in having to completely change the way in which they present Notices or face dealing with what may have been a huge number of representations from individuals that were identified. Clearly, it was vital to the FCA to avoid this and they now have decisions in their favour from the most senior courts in this country which will no doubt bring about great relief.”

Read the full articles in The Times Law Brief, behind a paywall, the FT Adviser and Law360.