A biotechnologist and serial entrepreneur has failed in his bid to sue Royal Bank of Scotland for suing him over mortgage arrears.
Peter Hoskins, an investor in AIM-listed biotech company Eirx, claims that the bank’s 2019 decision to seek possession of his home over £150,000 of mortgage arrears left him unable to access funds that he could have used for business opportunities.
The property at the centre of the legal battle is Morwell House, in Tavistock, Devon. It is a Grade 1 listed medical manor house on the edge of Dartmoor that was put on the market by Strutt and Parker for £4.5m in 2018.
The legal action by Hoskins was brought as a counterclaim to RBS’s lawsuit seeking repossession of the property.
Hoskins argued that, as loans to the company were secured on the property, the bank failed to appreciate that a duty existed to communicate and “provide reasonable co-operation” to Hoskins and Eirx.
According to the ruling, handed down this week, Hoskins alleged the bank had “no significant experience or expertise of lending in the highly specialised field of fledgling biotechnology companies, and the risks and profiles of that business sector”.
He said the bank should have informed him and Eirx that “it was not sufficiently experienced or expert to provide the banking and related services which they required”, and told them to seek banking services elsewhere.
Finally, he argued that the bank should have told him and Eirx that “that it was not sufficiently solvent and/or capitalised and/or liquid to provide commercial banking services to Eirx either from the outset of the relationship with EiRx or subsequently, but certainly prior to September 2007, or by the latest by March 2008”.
He alleged that the bank’s decision to pull credit by seeking repossession caused him to lose millions of pounds.
“Mr Hoskins is a biotechnologist and serial entrepreneur who has used his scientific skills to invest in biotechnology companies. He was very well connected within the City of London and was formerly Sir John Major’s constituency vice-president,” his lawyers argued.
“As a consequence of the bank’s fraud and/or breaches of duty, Mr Hoskins was unable to raise finance for a sway of fledgling companies, his reputation as an entrepreneur was irreparably damaged, he has had to sell many of his most valuable possessions, and he even had difficulty in opening a bank account,” they claimed.
“The best particulars that Mr Hoskins can give is that his personal financial losses exceed £10m. Pursuant to the assignment of Eirx’s claims to him, Mr Hoskins is also entitled to recover and will produce evidence to quantify the losses incurred by Eirx which are estimated to exceed £25m,” his lawyers argued.
RBS denied all the claims and at a hearing in July asked Judge Paul Matthews, sitting as a High Court Judge in Bristol, to strike out Hoskins’ counterclaim.
And in a ruling handed down this week, the judge agreed, ruling that the grounds that were being brought were too similar to a settled legal dispute between Hoskins and the bank over an overdraft.
