Following trial in October 2024, Rajah J handed down judgment on 13 February 2025 in Illiquidx v Altana Wealth Limited & Ors [2025] EWHC 299 (Ch), in which Ben Longstaff of Hogarth acted for the defendants, led by Tom Moody-Stuart of 8 New Square. The dispute centred on allegations of misuse of a confidential “Business Opportunity” to set up an investment fund dealing in Venezuelan distressed debt (principally defaulted sovereign and PDVSA bonds). Illiquidx said that its disclosure of the Business Opportunity to the two defendant companies, Altana and Brevent, was confidential under the terms of an NDA signed between those companies and Illiquidx, and it claimed the defendants had breached the NDA by going on to set up their own fund following the cessation of the joint venture between the parties in late 2019. Illiquidx alleged joint tortfeasorship of the two individual defendants, Mr Robinson and Mr Kastner (who were not personally parties to the NDA), as persons in control of the defendant companies, and also claimed copyright infringement in certain material contained in marketing slides produced as part of the joint venture, limited parts of which had been later reproduced by the defendants.

The defendants denied that the Business Opportunity was confidential, or even if it was covered as confidential information by the NDA it had in any event been rendered “public domain” and thus carved-out from protection under a particular clause of the contract.

Rajah J held that the “Business Opportunity” did constitute confidential information for the purposes of the NDA, and based on his construction the meaning of “public domain” in the contract he found that it was not subject to the carve-out. He held that the defendant companies were liable for breach of contract for misusing that information. However, the Judge found that there was no concurrent equitable obligation of confidence imposed on the defendants, and held that the requirements for joint tortfeasorship set out by the Supreme Court in Lifestyle Equities v Ahmed [2024] UKSC 17 were not made out for Mr Robinson or Mr Kastner, as they appeared to have believed that nothing confidential had ever been disclosed by Illiquidx, and that Altana and Brevent were complying with the NDA.

Illiquidx’s claim for copyright infringement failed. Based on Illiquidx’s pleadings the relevant copyright work was held to be the entire slide presentation, not just the individual slides focused on by Illiquidx at trial. On that basis, and in light of the limited originality in the slides, Rajah J held that the defendants had not reproduced a “substantial part” of the earlier work.