[2025] EWHC 2336 (Ch)

The defendant argues that if the notices had been served earlier, and a challenge to the schemes had been raised earlier, PAG would have used an alternative scheme or otherwise divested itself of the properties in order to avoid liability to NDR altogether.

This was never pleaded, and the witnesses who gave evidence about it were not directors of PAG. Mr Mather’s evidence on the point was equivocal: he said he couldn’t say what would have happened, and his evidence was of course that PAG thought the schemes worked, absent any Court decision that they did not. Once the challenge was made, the issue has been defended very vigorously. Accordingly I do not accept that had the claimants moved more swiftly, the defendant would have behaved any differently. In my view, it would not.