Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

[2025] UKUT 00185 (TCC)

Fecha: 09-Abr-2025

October Audit Committee

October Audit Committee

449.

The October Audit Committee was provided with the text of Ms Roberts’s email about the meeting with Mr Lane, see §163. However, we have already found that this text suffered from the following errors and omissions (see §§316-318):

(1)

there were “regulatory interpretation issues” about the classification of the loans in question, when there was no doubt about the regulatory interpretation;

(2)

reweighting had been raised as a “potential issue” by the PRA, when the PRA had been told by the Bank that it had made an error;

(3)

the estimate of £600m was based on sampling, when it was not;

(4)

there was an “ongoing dialogue” with the PRA about the issue, when there was no dialogue: instead, the Bank had informed the PRA that it was remediating the issue.

450.

The Audit Committee was also provided with a “Q3 Update on accounting, reporting and control matters” (see §§199-201), which stated in the opening section (our emphasis):

“our Q3 Trading Update has been prepared on a consistent basis to previous quarterly trading updates and there are no significant accounting or reporting matters to bring to the Committee’s attention.”

451.

That report did include a section headed “Reporting on Risk Weighted Assets”, but this stated that the Bank had “commenced a piece of work to review our calculation of Risk Weighted Asset reporting to the regulator”; that the work was expected to be completed by the end of the year, and that the Committee would be advised as to “any corrections which will be reported to the regulator and any revisions required to our reporting methodologies”. It did not give a figure for the estimated quantum of the RWA errors. The related minutes instead record (our emphasis):

“It was expected that the work would be complete by year end, the Committee would be updated on any corrections required to be reported to the regulator and any revisions required to reporting methodologies…The impact of incorrect reporting on the balance sheet was not insignificant.”