French reinsurer Scor has sued Barclays, demanding that the bank hand over hundreds of pages of confidential documents relating to a botched takeover bid it was working on.
Barclays had been advising Covéa, a French mutual insurer, which last year wanted to make a bid for Scor. Covéa is already Scor’s largest shareholder with 8 per cent and has a standstill agreement not to go beyond 10 per cent until April of this year. Scor pushed back strongly against the potential bid and Covéa has since said it was no longer interested in a deal.
In court documents filed with the UK High Court relating to the case, Scor claims that “Barclays obtained from Covéa information that was highly confidential and sensitive to Scor”. Scor is demanding that Barclays stop using the documents and hand them over.
The information includes details of a valuation of Scor prepared by BNP Paribas and details of a rival deal that Scor was working on.
This information, it alleges, came from Covéa’s chief executive Thierry Derez, who at the time had a seat on Scor’s board. He resigned from the board last November.
“Barclays knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that such information was confidential to Scor and/or that it had been obtained by Mr Derez in breach of confidence and loyalty owed to Scor,” the court documents say.
“So far as Scor is aware,” adds the filing, “Barclays remains in receipt of the confidential information and remains engaged by Covéa in relation to a potential acquisition by Covéa of Scor.”
Scor is also claiming damages, although the court documents do not detail how much it wants, and it wants an inquiry into how much information Barclays received from Covéa or Mr Derez.
Barclays declined to comment.
Scor has previously launched legal action against Covéa, Mr Derez and Rothschild, one of the insurer’s other advisers. Rothschild has declined to comment and Covéa has denied any wrongdoing. Its board said last month that it “firmly rejects all the groundless accusations made by Scor and reaffirms its unanimous support to Thierry Derez and his action”.
Mr Derez has dismissed Scor’s claims as “contrived”.
Rothschild and Credit Suisse had also been advising Scor on the takeover attempt but the Swiss bank pulled out in the autumn.
In an interview with French daily Les Echos last month, Denis Kessler, Scor’s chief executive, said Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Credit Suisse, intervened personally to stop the bank advising Covéa.
The Scor boss also said that after winning a case in London’s High Court in December to force Credit Suisse to hand over documents relating to the deal, the bank “sent us more than 395 mails and 3,000 pages, which contained information and documents from Scor that should never have been sent to third parties”.
