Business case
A director of a British agriculture and food production business brought a claim on the company’s behalf against its former directors and owners. The case arose from their failure to comply with the terms of a divestment order imposed by a competition authority, including by extracting profits through the application of fictitious charges and transferring a key retail customer account away from the business.
While the agriculture and food production sector is highly consolidated, with a small number of large players, retailers still exert significant buyer power. In that context, it is essential to understand the role of both formal and informal arrangements, and the implications of negotiations between the parties, when developing the counterfactual and assessing the financial impact of commercial conduct.
We were engaged as independent experts by the claimant, firstly to opine on the nature of the charges, and secondly to assess claimant’s losses arising from those charges, the customer transfer and other breaches. We issued two expert reports and a joint statement with the respondent’s experts, with the case settling shortly before trial.