Class Law partner Stephen Alexander has met with 150 Independent Insurance employees in Manchester, to gather evidence and discuss the planned class action against organisations involved in the insurer's collapse.
Alexander ran a meeting on the class action at the Howard Hotel in Temple this afternoon, attended by about 70 brokers, employees, shareholders and trade creditors.
He said several hundred creditors, including some large institutional shareholders, had already expressed interest in the class action.
Auditors KPMG are the likeliest targets of the action, followed by government bodies such as the Department of Trade and Industry and the Financial Services Authority and actuaries Watson Wyatt.
Alexander said they would be pursued on grounds such as wrongful trading, negligence and breach of statutory duty.
Ratings agencies could also be a target, Alexander said, “depending on what they should have known, not what they did know”.
The directors of Independent could be pursued if their directors and officers' cover was high enough.
“It's not about whether you've got a good case, it's about whether you've got a good case against people who can pay,” Alexander said.
Alexander stressed that the action was not vindictive and was unlikely to target high-profile members of Independent's management team, despite personal feeling running high in the industry.
“The action is not a witch hunt, its not a vendetta, we
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