A large proportion of the work our forensic accounting team undertake is quantifying losses in commercial disputes; acting approximately equally for both claimants/petitioners and defendants/respondents, and sometimes as a SJE (Single Joint Expert).
Our clients’ range in size from SMEs to large listed companies and quantum of cases ranges from low hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of pounds. Many of these matters have an international dimension.
The disputes that we are instructed on include:
Contractual disputes - where we are required to quantify the losses arising to organisations as a result of alleged or actual breaches in contracts, particularly between suppliers and customers. As well as past losses, we are often required to quantify and discount future losses to calculate their current value.
Breach of warranty and misrepresentation – we are accustomed to reading warranties, identifying breach and providing cogent calculations of the quantum of loss arising in post M&A transaction claims and counter-claims
Professional negligence - where appropriate, we provide input on liability issues (primarily in relation to alleged negligence by accountants and auditors) as well as quantifying the damages involved. Our work often involves providing detailed explanation of the impact of the alleged negligence and how it created divergence between the actual state of affairs and a counterfactual scenario.
Shareholder disputes (including s994 petitions) and partnership disputes - where we are instructed to either investigate alleged wrongdoing by one of the parties and/or to quantify the losses that have arisen. In particular, we have acted in a large number of unfair prejudice claims, where we are required to value minority shareholdings in companies.
Claims against Governmental organisations - for example where it is claimed that losses have arisen as a result of failures or fraud in tender processes or where there has been a breach of International Investment Agreements.
Commercial agency claims - we are experienced in quantifying losses [based on the methodology established in Lonsdale v Howard & Hallam Ltd 2007] and are alive to the common recurring issues, including calculating the value of an agency on a hypothetical open market basis.
Many of the commercial dispute matters in which we are instructed rely upon our expertise in valuation matters.
Whist our senior team members have acted as expert witnesses in hundreds of UK and international disputes and are highly experienced in giving evidence under cross examination, we also recognise that many matters can be settled prior to a hearing. We therefore always approach the quantification of losses in in a commercial but robust manner in order to provide credible quantum which should assist the parties in reaching settlement.
