Court’s billion-dollar global finance crash case ends
GUERNSEY’S largest-ever court case was finally concluded yesterday morning when the Royal Court ruled against a near $2 billion claim from liquidators of the Guernsey-based fund Carlyle Capital Corporation.
There was international interest in the outcome of the case, where US private equity firm Carlyle and seven senior employees, including co-founder Bill Conway, were being sued by liquidators to Carlyle Capital Corporation, a separate fund that was set up in 2007 to invest in mortgage-backed bonds.
CCC was based in Guernsey and listed in Amsterdam. It borrowed heavily to buy bonds – high-quality residential mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the US agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – but after the financial crisis hit in 2007, the fund collapsed a few months later and investors lost nearly $1bn.
A six-month trial conducted between June and December 2016 finally ended when Lt-Bailiff Hazel Marshall summarised a 500-page judgment into just a few words at a Royal Court hearing attended by advocates for both sides.
