Barclays v Amanda Staveley: high court latest

THE pressure rose on Barclays over its £1.5 billion court battle with Amanda Staveley today after one of the bank’s star witnesses changed his evidence the night before taking the stand.

David Forbes, formerly of Abu Dhabi government fund the International Petroleum Investment Company, had launched a scathing attack on Staveley over her role in a bailout of Barclays in 2008.

The essence of the case is that Staveley claims she is owed as an investor and a principal in the deal, while Barclays insists she was a mere introducer and, at times, an irritant.

Forbes branded Staveley a publicity seeker “who would confidently make assertions which proved to lack any real foundation or which she would later contradict without realising”.

Last night Staveley’s lawyers moved to have his entire testimony struck from the record, noting that his written testimony about when and where he spoke to Staveley changed at the last minute.

While that is not unusual in high profile court cases, it poses a problem for the Barclays defence ahead of a key period in the trial.

Next week sees former UK Finance chief Stephen Jones give testimony. Jones, a former Barclays executive, stepped down from UK Finance after it emerged he had allegedly referred to Staveley’s firm PCP Capital Partners as “a bunch of scumbags”.

The pushback on the evidence from Forbes was led by PCP lawyer Joe Smouha, QC.

He told: Mr Justice Waksman yesterday: “We will, of course, be submitting that Mr Forbes’ evidence is wholly unreliable and that he has made untrue and serious allegations of dishonesty, which should never have been adopted by Barclays and that, both in his witness statement and in his evidence to his Lordship, your Lordship cannot accept a word of what he has said as honest or reliable.”