Lancer mostly unsuccessful in bid to overturn aspects of employment case ruling

Lancer Asset Management has had another day in court, and this time has failed (mostly) to overturn aspects of a ruling in an employment dispute it has been involved in. Lancer, which ran the Abu Dhabi royal family’s UK property holdings, including the Berkeley Square estate, from 2001 to 2017, is involved in a series of bitter disputes with its former clients stemming from their decision to replace Lancer with another firm, Astrea Asset Management. Lancer’s employees were to have been transferred over to Astrea under TUPE rules. However, amid accusations of breach of fiduciary duty and failing to co-operate on an orderly handover of the business, the Lancer directors were dismissed by Astrea for alleged “gross misconduct in agreeing new and (in their view, dishonestly) inflated contracts of employment for themselves and in obstructing requests for information by transferee and owner”, as stated in court documents. The directors deny misconduct. This led to Lancer managing director John Kevill, chairman Andrew Lax, finance director Byron Pull and asset manager Duncan Ferguson suing Astrea at the Central London Employment Tribunal in 2018 for unfair dismissal. And in a ruling handed down in January last year a tribunal judge agreed that Kevill and Ferguson had been unfairly dismissed, but Pull and Lax had not. Even so, the judge cancelled Kevill’s award of compensation for being “deliberately obstructive” during the handover period and said that the new contracts of employment the group had awarded themselves were void. The directors appealed parts of this ruling at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in February, and in a ruling today (15 May) the judge who heard the case, Judge Shanks, dismissed most of their arguments. Judge Shanks ruled that the earlier judge was entitled to conclude that there was “no legitimate commercial purpose” for the new employment contracts that Astrea complained about. The earlier judge was also entitled to rule that the directors “were acting dishonestly in awarding themselves the enhanced contractual terms knowing that the claimant would be paid at the expense of Astrea”, he said. However, he said that the lower court must reconsider whether Lax and Pull were transferred over to Astrea under TUPE rules. The judge also said the court must reconsider whether Kevill’s compensation (three weeks’ pay) should be cancelled. “We are pleased that the appeal tribunal judge has found in Astrea’s favour on the key issues,” said Astrea chief executive Giles Easter in an e-mailed statement. He continued: “We are confident that the Employment Tribunal will find in our favour again on the two issues which have been referred back to it, and that justice will ultimately prevail. “Our sole focus remains on continuing to provide the highest-quality advice to our client, delivering strategic improvements across the portfolio and significantly repositioning the estate.” Photo: Nicholas Bailey/Shutterstock