Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

[2025] UKUT 00185 (TCC)

Fecha: 09-Abr-2025

The Tribunal’s view

The Tribunal’s view

554.

We have already considered each of the above mitigants in the context of the Bank, see §§387-408, and decided as follows:

(1)

The reasonable issuer in the Bank’s position would not have considered that the possibility of obtaining AIRB for residential mortgages would mitigate against the increased RWAs for CLIP loans.

(2)

The position was the same for the Pillar 2A offset.

(3)

Phasing-in was not considered until the end of 2018, and even if it had been, a reasonable issuer would not have decided that it could publish incorrect figures on the basis of this possibility, which had never been raised with the PRA.

(4)

The position was the same in relation to the PRA’s discretion over waivers of rules.

555.

It is also clear that, at best, the mitigants would only have reduced or eliminated the extra capital required as a result of the increased RWAs for the CLIP loans. The mitigants would not have changed the RWAs themselves: the figures published at the time of the Q3 Update would still have been materially wrong, and the Applicants knew that was the case.

Conclusion on issue two

556.

For the reasons set out above, we find that the Applicants were knowingly concerned in the Bank’s breach of LR 1.3.3R.