News

In this issue of Signature Litigation’s Financial and Regulatory Disputes Update, the second of 2016, we examine the Financial Conduct Authority’s 2016/17 Business Plan and Risk Outlook and its impact on regulated firms in the industry. Our second article discusses the recent judgments in Hayfin Opal Luxco 3 SARL v Windermere VII CMBS plc and Credit Suisse Asset Management LLC v Titan Europe 2006-1 PLC and others, concerning the entitlement of the Class X noteholders in notoriously complex legacy CMBS transactions.

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Another Year, Another FCA Business Plan – What’s In Store For 2016/17

Partner Abdulali Jiwaji and Associate Johnny Shearman’s article has been published in the following publications:

FT Adviser – 26th July 2016

Corporate Adviser – 29th July 2016

Professional Adviser – 31st July 2016

Global Banking and Finance Review – 2nd August 2016

The Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA“) published its annual Business Plan and Risk Outlook in April for the coming year.  Many of the FCA’s aims remain the same or substantially similar to last year, with individual accountability and changing the culture of regulated firms still high on the Authority’s list of priorities.  However, strikingly there is less emphasis on enforcement action, which seems to be in line with comments made by Tracey McDermott, acting CEO of the FCA, in October 2015, that the level of enforcement action was “not sustainable – for regulators or for the industry“.  In the following article we look at some of the messages coming out of this year’s Business Plan and identify where enforcement action may still be a prominent part of the strategy.

Culture and Accountability – Focus on senior management

It is perhaps unsurprising that the FCA has reiterated that the culture of regulated firms “has been, and remains, a priority“, particularly in light of the criticism the Authority received from some quarters following the scrapping of the thematic review of banking culture.  The FCA seems to suggest that rather than broad, industry-wide reviews, they will concentrate on working with firms on an individual basis to tailor their approach.  However, the exact manner in which the FCA will work with firms, and the measures of any success, remains, at best, uncertain.  The FCA claims that a measure of its success in this area over the medium to long term will be “a culture of accountability at all levels“, but there is no indication of what factors will be taken into account to judge this outcome.

Linked to a change in culture on a firm-wide level is the continued focus on enhancing individual accountability in senior positions.  The FCA is aided in this regard by the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (“SMCR“), which came into force in the banking sector in March of this year and was commented on in more detail in our July and November 2015 updates.  The SMCR provides that management may be held accountable if a firm contravenes requirements in the area for which the manager in question is responsible.  The FCA is looking to rely on this, and the data collection requirements of the SMCR, to continually assess key individuals within regulated firms and maintain a dialogue with firms as to what is expected of their senior management.  Further, the FCA has made it clear that it intends to extend this accountability regime to all FSMA¹ regulated firms in the future.  Although the FCA’s predecessor failed in its pursuit of John Pottage, the former CEO of UBS Wealth Management, as covered in our January 2015 issue, the SMCR arguably eases the path for similar actions.

Markets – Focus on market abuse

This priority was added by the FCA this year on the back of the Fair and Effective Markets Review (“FEMR“), which looked at Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (“FICC“) markets.  It is clear that the FCA views implementing the 21 recommendations made by FEMR as a major step in its wholesale markets agenda and will look to work with the Treasury on any of the recommendations which require primary legislation.  Further, the Business Plan lists the supervising of the now regulated FICC benchmarks as a main priority of the Authority in the coming year.  Additional power is given to the FCA in this area as the Market Abuse Regulation kicks in.  It may be that the FCA wants to send a message that it is looking to refocus on market abuse given that those were only 2 public outcomes announced in 2014/15 for market abuse.  For further analysis of the market abuse regime, see our January update.

Linked to the incoming Market Abuse Regime, though not specifically covered in the FCA’s Business Plan is its enforcement approach to insider dealing.  The Authority has had more success in this regard, with the recent prosecutions of Martyn Dodgson and Andrew Hind, sentenced to four and half years and three and a half years respectively as part of Operation Tabernula.  These represent the largest sentences to date and mark the fourth and fifth convictions of the estimated £14million Operation.  The FCA is clearly keen to pursue enforcement action, no matter the expense, against those involved in insider trading and other market abuse.

Advice – Focus on misselling

Financial advice is another addition to the Business Plan this year, following the Financial Advice Market Review (“FAMR“).  FAMR was, as with FEMR above, run in conjunction with the Treasury, and it is no surprise that the FCA wants to focus attention on its plans for implementing two of its widest-ranging reviews (especially given the criticism it received for scrapping the thematic review of banking culture).  FAMR made a number of findings, in particular that financial advice for consumers needs to be simplified.  The impacts of FAMR are seen as longer term objectives for the FCA, with a progress report due in 2017 and review of the outcomes of FAMR due in 2019.

Financial Crime – Focus on Anti Money Laundering

This year will see the Financial Crime Annual Data Return being rolled out.  It is hoped that it will allow for the identification of firms with material weaknesses in their anti-money laundering (“AML“) controls which the FCA can focus on and work with to resolve any issues.  In addition, the Fourth EU Money Laundering Directive requires implementation in the UK by 2017, and the FCA is planning to support and advise the Treasury in this respect.  Interestingly, AML represents one area where the FCA has indicated how it plans to measure its success.   It will give each regulated firm a scoring highlighting those which need improvement in this area.  This scoring will not only allow us to see how well each individual firm is doing in this respect but also how well the FCA is doing in resolving problems.  High scores across the board is surely what the FCA is hoping for. Those firms with a low score and which need improvement may find themselves on the Authority’s radar for potential enforcement action.

Conclusion

A key theme throughout the Business Plan is that the FCA is looking to be proactive in its supervisory role and look to work with firms on an individual basis.  Arguably it could be said that the FCA is working towards more cooperative and manageable solutions as between it and regulated firms.  This appears to mark a change in direction from the previous emphasis on enforcement.  Hefty fines have been imposed on a number of key financial institutions but perhaps the FCA fears that will not give rise to the industry wide changes it seeks.  However, it may also be that the FCA does not want to over-commit to wide-ranging enforcement objectives, given that a new CEO, Andrew Bailey, will be joining in July of this year.  We will have to wait and see what impact the new CEO will have on the FCA’s enforcement activity and it will be interesting to note how Mark Steward, still fairly new in his role of Head of Enforcement, will fulfil his mandate under Mr Bailey.

¹ Financial Services and Markets Act 2000

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat – Two different approaches to the plight of the legacy CMBS Noteholders result in the same outcome

This article has been published in The Barrister on 19th July 2016 and can be found here.

This article discusses the recent judgments in Hayfin Opal Luxco 3 SARL v Windermere VII CMBS plc and Credit Suisse Asset Management LLC v Titan Europe 2006-1 PLC and others, both concerning the entitlement of the Class X noteholders in notoriously complex legacy CMBS transactions.  We explore the opposing approaches taken by Mr Justice Snowden in the Financial List and the Chancellor of the High Court in addressing the same issues, curiously leading them to arrive at the same result.

Background

Both Windermere and Titan concern the interpretation of complex contractual arrangements comprising legacy CMBS transactions and specifically, the entitlement of the Class X noteholders in those structures.

CMBS structures have been widely cited as a means for financial institutions to reduce their own risk on commercial loans they have made by bundling them together, grouping them by quality, and selling an interest in them to investors by way of a bond.  Noteholders benefit from interest and principal payments from the underlying borrowers, but they are also exposed to the risk of default in the underlying loans.  Selling the debt in this way allows the originator of mortgage loans to relieve some of the pressure on its capital stores and lend more to increase returns.

As the notes are issued in classes with varying levels of seniority, the differing classes of noteholders are exposed to differing levels of risk and return, with the Class A noteholders being exposed to the lowest levels of risk but also entitled to the lowest levels of return.  The Class X notes are something of an anomaly within the structure.  The Class X notes are typically purchased for nominal value by the originators of the underlying loans and predominantly carry the benefit of any excess interest payments collected at loan level over payments made to the other noteholders.  At a basic level, this allows the extraction of any such excess by the originating bank, which would otherwise be retained by the structure.  The purchase monies paid by the Class X noteholder are typically held in a separate, secured account for the Class X noteholder from the outset, so the Class X noteholder is not exposed to the risk of default in respect of payment of principal.  The Class X noteholder enjoys a further advantage by ranking equally with the Class A noteholders and ahead of all other classes for payments of interest.  At this very high level is it apparent that the commercial purpose of the noteholding for a Class X noteholder is different to that of the other classes of notes.

At the heart of the issues in dispute in Windermere and Titan was the correct interpretation of the transaction documentation – which was largely the same in the two transactions – in determining the entitlement of the Class X noteholders to interest payments following large scale defaults on the underlying loans.

The Court

As an initial observation it is notable that Windermere was transferred to the Financial List, whilst Titan was heard in the High Court in front of the Chancellor who also sits as a Financial List Judge.  Being cases involving issues arising out of complex financial structures, each with a suite of bespoke, non-standardised documentation, they are exactly the kind of case which the newly established Financial List aims to address with what it intends to be a specialised approach befitting the issues in question.  It is encouraging that the Financial List took on one of the cases, but given the clear symmetries between the two, it is interesting to note that the other was not, and perhaps especially so given the very different approaches taken in each case to arrive at the same result.

Differing approaches

Determination of the issues, in essence, demanded the application of the broad principles of contractual interpretation.  The latest authorities establish that the words in the document are the starting point for questions of interpretation: “The exercise of interpreting a provision involves identifying what the parties meant through the eyes of a reasonable reader, and, save perhaps in a very unusual case, that meaning is most obviously to be gleaned from the language of the provision.”¹  Alongside this general principle, the Court must also take into consideration a number of other factors: of particular pertinence here are commercial common sense and the overall purpose of the contract.

Balancing these principles is not always straightforward.  A strict application of the natural and ordinary meaning of the relevant clause(s) in a contract could well be at odds with an application of commercial common sense enshrined in a purposive approach. The courts do not easily accept that parties have made linguistic mistakes, particularly in formal documents,² and yet time and again commercial common sense draws the courts away from a more linguistically focussed interpretation of contractual provisions.  Previously, the courts have held that “if detailed semantic and syntactical analysis of words in a commercial contract is going to lead to a conclusion that flouts business commonsense, it must be made to yield to business commonsense“.³ However, the Supreme Court has more recently made clear that “the reliance placed in some cases on commercial common sense and surrounding circumstances … should not be invoked to undervalue the importance of the language of the provision“.⁴  The case law exhibits a continuing oscillation between these two principles.  As the Chancellor in Titan articulates in his judgment, each of the cases within the usual cohort of authorities can be, and usually is, cited in argument for its use of slightly different language or emphasis, depending upon the particular facts and the argument the party wishes to emphasise.

The difficulty of the task before judges seeking to make a ruling as to how a contractual provision should properly be interpreted is well demonstrated by considering the Windermere and Titan cases together.  When comparing these two cases, what is perhaps most striking is not that the judges each favoured prioritising a different consideration at an almost inevitable expense to the others in cases of this kind, but that in doing so, they arrived at the same result on predominantly the same facts.

It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the issues at stake in the two cases in full, so the approach of the two judges is analysed in the context of one particular issue addressed in both cases – that of default interest.

Default Interest

In Titan, when considering the question of whether default interest on the underlying loans should be factored into the interest rate payable to the Class X noteholder, the Judge made his determination that it should not be, on the basis that the parties could not have intended, as a commercial consequence, that the Class X noteholder (who is the originator of the underlying loans and also the instigator of the CMBS transaction) receive an increased revenue by virtue of a default on the underlying loans.  In doing so, the Judge strayed away from the text of the relevant provisions, even though he accepted the submissions of the Class X noteholder who argued “forcefully and eloquently” that those provisions, given their natural and ordinary meaning, provided for the inclusion of default interest.  The Chancellor’s determination here reflects his clear inclination to look to what the parties ‘must’ have intended.  This would appear to place less emphasis on the review of the transaction documentation which the senior courts have advised should be the primary step.

By contrast, in Windermere Mr Justice Snowden expressly took the view that “a premium was to be placed on the language actually used in cases concerning tradeable financial instruments“.  Mr Justice Snowden determined that default interest on an underlying loan should not be included in interest amounts payable to the Class X noteholder, but on the basis of a more text-based interpretation of the terms associated with the requisite calculation.

Whilst both judgements conclude that default interest on the underlying loans should not be included in interest payments to the Class X noteholder, the differing reasons given in the judgments exemplify the kind of problems that can arise when considering the commercial purpose of a contract.

As discussed, in Titan the Chancellor made his determination on the basis of what he considered must have been the commercial intention of the parties, or more specifically what could not have been intended by the parties. While the Chancellor did not disagree with the arguments advanced by the Class X noteholder as to the natural and ordinary meaning of the relevant words in the document, he said that the informed reader might, in light of certain contextual factors, understand the natural and ordinary meaning of the words to be something different.  That being so, the Chancellor turned to consider which interpretation might carry the commercial outcome intended by the parties.  The Chancellor reasoned that:

“the effect of including default interest in the calculation of the “Net Mortgage Rate” is that the worse the Loans perform the higher proportion of the Loan income is payable to the Class X Noteholder. That is counter-intuitive bearing in mind that the Class X Notes represent the financial reward to the Originator of the structured note offering, which was intended to attract investors on the basis that the Loans were sound and shown to be such by favourable Moody’s ratings for the Notes.”

Against that conclusion, other commercial considerations might also be valid, as was argued before the Chancellor.  The Class X noteholder, as originator of the underlying loans, whilst not preferring that the borrowers default any more than the other noteholders would have wanted them to, included provision for default interest to apply on the underlying loans in the event that a default occurred. That the Class X noteholder sought to further minimise their risk of being adversely impacted by any default of the borrowers by means of securitisation should not mean that they lose the right, on the grounds of “commercial common sense” to enjoy additional interest if a default did occur. It is true that a default of the borrowers post-securitisation would not impact upon the payment of principal to the Class X noteholder (since that is protected in a separate account, as aforementioned), however it could adversely affect their reputation in the market and as such, a Class X noteholder might want to be compensated for this.  That such financial gain might encourage banks to structure CMBS transactions in a way that dooms them to fail, in spite of the initial rating assurances indicating the contrary, any more than a lender who applies default interest on a vanilla loan would hope that the borrower defaults, is perhaps improbable.  Determining the commercial intention of the parties is itself an interpretive exercise involving an analysis of the intent of not just the parties to the particular contract, but the market for CMBS transactions as a whole.

The aforementioned is perhaps precisely the kind of uncertainty which arises through  an emphasis on commercial purpose, which the Supreme Court warns against in Arnold v Britton and which Mr Justice Snowden, having due regard to the fact that this case concerned a complex financial product and his brief as a Financial List Judge, was keen to avoid.

Conclusion

In Titan, the Class X noteholder brings its case on the basis of a linguistic interpretation of the clauses and the other documentation. Despite this being a legitimate approach, the Chancellor finds in favour of the other classes of noteholder who rely on commercial common sense to argue to the contrary. In doing so, it is at least implicit that the Chancellor would have come to a different conclusion had he adopted a different approach. However, in Windermere (on slightly different drafting of the relevant provisions) the linguistic approach is relied on heavily but Mr Justice Snowden still finds in favour of the other classes of noteholder. With a range of potentially conflicting tools at a judge’s disposal for the purposes of determining issues embedded in contractual interpretation, the law on contractual interpretation is still seemingly vulnerable to a tail-wagging-the-dog approach whereby an instinctive view of what is commercially ‘fair’ is arrived at, whereupon the Courts then apply the necessary tools to justify that outcome.

Permission to appeal both decisions has been granted, and these issues of contractual interpretation are passing through the courts on a regular basis.  We are certain to see further guidance from the appeal courts emerging.  As always, the best route to avoiding this uncertainty is to close out any ambiguity in the language adopted from the outset and champion transparent and explicit transaction documentation on all issues of import.

¹ Lord Neuberger in Arnold v Britton [2015] UKSC 36.

² Lord Hoffman in Investors Compensation Scheme Ltd. v West Bromwich Building Society [1997] UKHL 28, at 913.

³ Antaios Compania SA v Salen AB (The Antaios) [1985] AC 191.

⁴ Arnold v Britton [2015] UKSC 36.