Noel Quinn, CEO of British banking giant HSBC, has been accused of pressuring bank staff to hand £40 million ($49 million) to his friend’s real estate company where his daughter worked, court filings allege.
A lawsuit against HSBC
HSBA,
HSBC,
and real estate firm Mar City has been brought to the U.K high courts this week by former Mar City shareholders Tony and Maggie Ryan, over a £40 million credit facility and a £10 million personal loan that the bank gave in 2014, multiple reports say.
Lawyers for the Ryans say that they were “long standing friends” of Quinn and are seeking damages alleging that the bank chief encouraged the couple to accept the loan. They also accused the bank of using the loan to effectively take control of the company and push it into insolvency.
Mar City was previously listed on London’s AIM market and fell into administration in 2016.
HSBC’s lawyers deny all of the allegations, branding the accusations “selective, inaccurate and incomplete.” HSBC declined to comment.
The case was heard at a High Court hearing on Wednesday, where HSBC’s representative Bridget Lucas told the court that the couple offers “no explanations as to which assets of MCPLC were supposedly stripped.”
This is the second time the Ryans are looking for damages. Their case was previously thrown out, but the couple won an appeal for a second hearing after an appeals court ruled that the previous judge should have recused himself from the case over an “apparent bias” because HSBC had loaned to Judge Nigel Gerald and his wife for their hot yoga studio.
Representations for Tony and Maggie Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.
