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

The Authority accepted that Mr Kalaris did not know how Barclays had worked out the exact figure payable to the Qataris in order to ensure they were paid the 3.5% required to enter into the capital raising.

However, the Authority’s position was that Mr Kalaris’s responses were designed to give the impression that the fee had been calculated by reference to an assessment of the economic value of the services to be provided under the ASA, when he knew that was not the case. Instead of saying that the fee had been calculated to bridge the value gap, he implied that it had been worked out on a “bottom-up” basis, by considering the opportunity, the product, the region, the competition and the return Barclays could make over time.

The Authority therefore decided that Mr Kalaris’s response to Q3 was not the complete truth; Mr Stanley described Mr Kalaris’s description of the methodology as a “smokescreen” and a “distraction”.