UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2022-0000150 - [2024] UKUT 00254 (TCC)

On 2 April 2012, Mr Kalaris received a briefing from Mr Tinney. In the course of the 2014 Interview, Mr Kalaris answered questions about this briefing, and we make related findings later in this judgment.

There was then a subsequent LRC meeting; the initials stood for “legal, regulatory and compliance”. Mr Perry’s note of this meeting recorded that Mr Kalaris “flew off the handle” saying “you need to tell [GenVen] I’ll close them down if they stray outside their brief”. Under cross-examination, Mr Kalaris said he didn’t recall the meeting. There was then this exchange:

“Mr Stanley: It wouldn’t surprise you, would it, if you went off the handle about Gen Ven exceeding their remit?

Mr Kalaris It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”

We find that it was not out of character for Mr Kalaris to have reacted angrily to the approach taken by GenVen to the audit they had been instructed to carry out. We make no finding as to whether Mr Kalaris attended this meeting.

On 5 April 2012, a meeting took place at Barclays’ London office. Mr Kalaris, Mr Tinney, Ms Michelle Witter (Mr Kalaris’s Chief of Staff) all attended in person; Mr Perry attended by phone. Mr Biesinger and Mr Wall also attended, one of them by phone. Mr Perry made a note of this meeting, which Mr Stanley read to him in the course of cross-examination. It included this exchange:

“Mr Stanley: …and then you said

‘Look, you guys, we asked you to focus on BWA. We’re about to get slammed by the SEC already. I don’t want to hear what you think of me, AT [Andrew Tinney], wealth outside BWA, or my ManCo [Management Committee]. I just want to hear about Mitch [Cox] and his management team in the BWA.’

And it’s likely, isn’t it, that that would have been your reaction?

Mr Kalaris: It is likely that that was my reaction.”

Mr Kalaris also agreed that in the course of the meeting, “there was challenge and discussion about the interviews [with staff]”; that Mr Wall was “reading from something” and was “not giving us this information off the top of his head”; and that the conclusion of the meeting was that GenVen should use the information “as input into a workshop that would bring together all aspects of the cultural audit workstream”, including the work being carried out by Ms Hilgart. We make further findings of fact later in this judgment.

On 18 April 2012, a further meeting took place in New York, attended by Mr Kalaris, Mr Tinney and Mr Wall.