UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2022-000134 UT-2022-000135 UT-2022-000137 - [2025] UKUT 00214 (TCC)

Whilst we did not find the reference to the mere existence of these orders helpful or supportive of Mr Kasapis’s opinion, we were also not persuaded by Mr Shivji’s description of all of them as legacy orders or not illuminating without additional information.

We have identified eight of them (F27, F40, F48, F83, F106, F181, F203 and F222) which do not appear to be legacy orders, whether because they had only been placed or amended shortly before the Instance, they were close to the touch, or were amended after the Instance, suggesting that the Trader who had placed the relevant order still wanted it to trade. We accept that the Overlapping Small Orders may not have been an immediate priority at the time of the relevant Instance. Some of these orders do show that where a Trader was prepared to wait they could, in the right conditions, still trade these orders without improving the price, eg the first Overlapping Small Order in F106 and in F181.

We considered F40 to be interesting. The Authority’s position is that Mr Lopez had placed a Large Order to facilitate the execution of Mr Sheth’s Small Order of 40 lots (some of which had already traded) whilst at the same time prejudicing the likelihood of his manager’s order of 40 lots from trading (or at least trading at the price at which it had been entered). Mr Urra’s Overlapping Small Order did in fact trade at that price after the Instance.