One Bankwest class action rolling
JustKapital, an ASX listed litigation funder, will be the financier for a class action bought against Commonwealth Bank in connection with its alleged malfeasance over management of many Bankwest business loans.Trevor Hall of Hall Partners is the solicitor on the record. "This is the first, last and only genuine class action," Guy Goldrick of the Bankwest Class Action Group wrote in an email to supporters yesterday. There may be one other class action yet, though with a different rationale to that mounted by Goldrick and Hall.As reported last month, London lawyer Roger Brown has publicised that Harbour Litigation Funding is considering investing in a class action.Based on a draft of Hall's statement of claim (reported in Banking Day in April), damages claimed by the plaintiffs from Commonwealth Bank, if accepted by a judge and appeal courts, may stretch beyond hundreds of millions of dollars.Four elements of the damages mooted then include:• profits "referable to the growth in size and dollar value of the residential book" of Bankwest since 2008;• all "financial advantages obtained from the enhancement of the return on equity" arising from the dumping of lowly graded business loans;• the excess interest income on the loans of affected borrowers; and• the value of any "clawback" from HBOS, a concept described in the claim as "the value of any and all deductions achieved by the second defendant and by way of set off " in the share sale deed governing the sale of Bankwest.