High Court Clarifies Meaning Of "PDMR" In s.90A FSMA Claims

• Published date: 31 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Finance and Banking, Corporate/Commercial Law, Financial Services, Corporate and Company Law, Directors and Officers, Securities
• Law Firm: Herbert Smith Freehills
• Author: Mr Chris Bushell, Sarah Penfold and Holly McCann

The High Court has clarified what is meant by "person discharging managerial responsibilities" (PDMR) in the context of Section 90A and Schedule 10A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA), a key element of the test for statutory liability for statements made by UK listed companies in periodic publications: Various Investors v G4S Limited (formerly known as G4S plc) [2022] EWHC 1081 (Ch).

The statutory regime

Pursuant to Schedule 10A FSMA, paragraph 3(1), an issuer will be liable to pay compensation to a person who acquires, continues to hold or disposes of securities in reliance upon published information and suffers loss as a result of any untrue or misleading statement in (or omission of a "matter required to be included" from) that published information. An issuer will also be liable to pay compensation to a person who acquires, continues to hold or disposes of the securities and suffers loss in respect of the securities as a result of delay by the issuer in publishing information (paragraph 5(1)).

An issuer will only, however, be liable in the following circumstances:

• in respect of an untrue or misleading statement, if a PDMR within the issuer knew the statement to be untrue or misleading or was reckless as to whether it was untrue or misleading (paragraph 3(2));
• in respect of omissions, if a PDMR within the issuer knew the omission to be a dishonest concealment of a material fact (paragraph 3(3)); and
• in respect of delays, if a PDMR within the issuer acted dishonestly in delaying the publication of the information (paragraph 5(2)).

Paragraph 8(5) defines PDMR for the purposes of Schedule 10A as follows:

1. any director of the issuer (or person occupying the position of director, by whatever name called);
2. in the case of an issuer whose affairs are managed by its members, any member of the issuer;
3. in the case of an issuer that has no persons within paragraph (a) or (b), any senior executive of the issuer having responsibilities in relation to the information in question or its publication.

The meaning of "director"

In the case of G4S, which is a company with directors, it was common ground that the relevant paragraph was 8(5)(a), and that only directors of G4S would constitute PDMRs. However, the parties differed in relation to what was meant by "director".

The claimants contended that terms such as "director" take colour from their context and that the term should be interpreted broadly for the purposes of paragraph 8(5)(a). They...