Banking Disputes

It is often difficult for some law firms to act against financial institutions. Those institutions have historically provided lawyers with a large percentage of their fee income. Few firms want to bite the hand that has fed them, and may still feed them in the future. MBM seldom act for large financial institutions and the MBM Dispute Resolution Team is therefore able to bring claims against those institutions where many firms are unable or unwilling to do so.

We have recovered losses from a bank caused by that Bank’s negligence. We have recovered improperly charged breakage fees on termination of a debt factoring agreement. We currently act for a number of Pension Schemes in their claims against a large life company who they allege gave them negligent actuarial advice.

However, in the last few months we have been instructed by a number of business to investigate potential claims against their bank. Many of these claims come from our success in one case.

In 2008 MBM’s Dispute Resolution Group were instructed by Derek Carlyle to help him in a dispute with the Royal Bank of Scotland. In January 2010 Lord Glennie, and judge in the Court of Session (Scotland’s highest civil court) decided that the Bank had breached its agreement with Derek. You can find out more detail about Derek’s case in this case study .

Until we acted for Derek, I was always sceptical of Bank customers complaining that their Bank had “destroyed” their business. I suspected that the Bank had simply made a difficult commercial decision to put a failing business out of its misery. However, my views have changed.

Since Derek’s instruction a number of bank customers have instructed MBM to investigate and bring cases against their bank. You can read some case studies here about what banks are doing. There is little doubt that in many cases (although not all) the Banks have behaved badly when dealing with customers hit by the banking crisis and the resulting recession. Read further banks related press coverage here.

If this has happened to you, why not join our linked in group and share your experience. Email Cat MacLean or Neil Morrison for an invitation or to discuss this service further.

Visit MBM Commercial’s Banking Disputes blog and facebook page.