Mex Group Worldwide v Ford: High Court orders inquiry into losses from discharged freezing order

The High Court has ordered an inquiry into losses suffered by three defendants following the discharge of a worldwide freezing order obtained by Mex Group Worldwide Limited — a ruling that reinforces the potency of the cross-undertaking in damages as a check on the misuse of interim injunctions.

In a judgement handed down on 17 March 2026, Mr Justice Griffiths found that the First, Second and Seventh Defendants — Stewart Owen Ford, Brian Robert Cormack, and Regal Consultancy International Limited — had advanced a sufficiently arguable case on causation and loss to warrant an inquiry. The decision follows a parallel order made by Freedman J in respect of the Third and Eighth Defendants.

The worldwide freezing order was granted without notice by Lavender J in October 2023, in support of Scottish proceedings that were subsequently abandoned in March 2025. Lord Sandison, presiding in Scotland, found there was "no demonstrably satisfactory reason" for that abandonment and awarded the equivalent of full indemnity costs. He also noted that the litigation had been used to weaponise proceedings against the defenders by reporting its existence to the markets in which they operated.

The English freezing order had already been partially discharged — against different defendants — by the Court of Appeal in August 2024, which found the original application had involved deliberate omissions in the duty of full and frank disclosure.

The notification issue

A central feature of the judgement concerns notifications sent by the claimant's solicitors on 7 August 2024 — the day before the Court of Appeal handed down its ruling — to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Vienna Stock Exchange, custodians of the Eighth Defendant's bonds, and the relevant listing agents. These notifications had not been given in the nine months since the freezing order was originally obtained.

Their immediate effect was severe: bonds were delisted, new issuances became impossible, and listing agents resigned. Griffiths J drew what he described as "a reasonable and compelling inference" that the timing was deliberate — intended to cause maximum damage at the moment the claimant realised the freezing order was about to become untenable. No alternative explanation was offered.

The legal framework

The applicable principles are well established. The starting point, derived from nineteenth-century authority, is that an inquiry will ordinarily be ordered where a claimant ultimately fails and an injunction is discharged, unless there are special circumstances justifying departure from that default position. The bar at this first stage is deliberately low: a defendant need only show an arguable case that loss was caused by the order.

Griffiths J rejected each of the claimant's arguments against ordering the inquiry. Attacks on Mr Ford's character — including reference to FCA findings resulting in a fine and ban — were found to be irrelevant to the exercise of discretion; only inequitable conduct in the context of the litigation is a proper consideration. The court also declined to treat the defendants' previous affidavits of assets as inconsistent with their current claims: those affidavits captured a snapshot of existing assets, not future revenue streams.

Scope of recoverable loss

The court indicated that the inquiry will examine three distinct categories of alleged loss: Regal's lost introducer fees from bond proceeds; Mr Ford's contractual entitlement to residual surpluses from bond structures; and Mr Cormack's claimed reputational damage, including the loss of non-executive directorships — he had previously served on the board of Hearts of Midlothian PLC. On the last point, Griffiths J noted that general damages for upset, stress, loss of reputation, and loss of business opportunities can in principle be awarded under a cross-undertaking, citing the Court of Appeal's analysis in Abbey Forwarding v Hone (No 3) [2015].

The judgement serves as a reminder that a worldwide freezing order carries consequences that extend well beyond the courtroom — and that those consequences are ones for which the applicant may ultimately be required to account.

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