The High Court’s decision to adjourn the Aabar Holdings SARL v Glencore plc securities trial is more than a significant case-management ruling in a high-profile dispute. It is a reminder that, where civil claims and criminal enforcement proceedings arise from the same alleged misconduct, sequencing risk can become a central feature of the litigation. The order in which those processes unfold may affect litigation strategy, settlement dynamics and the evidential landscape.
The claim, brought under section 90 and/or 90A and schedule 10A to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, had been listed to begin in October 2026. It would have been the first major claim of its kind to proceed to trial in England. Instead, the trial has been adjourned until October 2028 because of the substantial overlap with pending criminal proceedings listed for 4 October 2027. That matters because the claim had been expected to provide important guidance on the developing landscape of securities litigation in England.
There is no automatic rule that civil proceedings must be adjourned in favour of criminal proceedings. Instead, the court must consider whether allowing the civil trial to proceed would create a real risk of injustice in the criminal proceedings, and whether that risk can be adequately addressed through safeguards in the civil process. In Aabar, the court concluded that the practical difficulties and risks were sufficiently serious that the civil trial had to give way.
Major shareholder claims often depend on reconstructing what a company and its senior management knew, when they knew it, what was said to the market, and whether the market was misled. Those questions can overlap closely with criminal or regulatory issues arising from the same underlying conduct. The civil court may be concerned with disclosure obligations, investor loss, causation and quantum. The criminal court may be concerned with individual culpability and the fairness of a trial. The legal questions differ, but the factual battleground may be substantially the same.
That overlap creates acute practical problems. Witnesses may be needed by different parties for different purposes. Disclosure in civil proceedings may intersect uncomfortably with the integrity of criminal proceedings. Restrictions designed to protect one process may limit the proper presentation of another.
For claimants and litigation funders, the Aabar adjournment is a reminder of the timing risk in cases of this nature. A two-year adjournment is not just an administrative inconvenience. It can increase costs, extend adverse-costs exposure, complicate funding arrangements and test claimant expectations. It may also alter settlement dynamics. A trial date expected to create pressure may lose much of its force if the dispute is pushed back for years. Witness evidence becomes harder to preserve, memories fade, and document management obligations continue long after the claim was expected to be trial-ready.
Likewise, for corporate defendants, delay is not necessarily an unqualified win. It postpones trial risk, but it also prolongs uncertainty. Allegations remain in the public domain; management time continues to be absorbed; interest continues to accrue. Insurance, accounting, provisioning, governance and stakeholder communications all become more complicated.
Importantly, the adjournment may protect the integrity of the criminal trial, but it leaves the corporate defendant exposed to the outcome of that process. A criminal trial may create a powerful evidential and forensic headwind. The company may then find itself defending the civil claim in the shadow of adverse publicity or adverse criminal findings, with all the settlement pressure and reputational consequences that entails.
That is why sequencing is not simply a procedural question. It can shape the commercial balance of the dispute.
The court’s balancing exercise is difficult from a public justice perspective. Integrity cuts both ways, and one process does not automatically warrant priority over another. There is a strong public interest in civil claims progressing efficiently and, where possible, in open court. Civil claimants are entitled to seek redress, and defendants are entitled to resolution.
But there is also a strong public interest in protecting the integrity of criminal proceedings. If a civil trial would require significant restrictions, witness management, closed sessions, limits on reporting or other safeguards, the court must ask whether the trial can fairly and realistically proceed. In complex litigation, safeguards can themselves become a source of difficulty, limiting evidence, restricting what may be said publicly, or generating satellite disputes about what can be relied upon and when.
For practitioners, the lesson is to plan for overlap early. Where civil, regulatory and criminal exposure may arise from the same factual matrix, parties need a coordinated strategy from the outset. That does not mean treating the different processes as identical. Each has its own purpose, procedure, duties and risks, and the timetable may ultimately be driven by decisions made in another forum. But decisions about disclosure, privilege, witness interviews, document preservation, regulatory engagement, insurance and public communications should be made with an eye to how they may affect other processes.
This is particularly important in securities litigation, where claims are often brought in the shadow of regulatory findings, criminal investigations, overseas proceedings or corporate resolutions. Those materials may help claimants identify and plead claims. But they may also import procedural complexity. The more closely the civil claim depends on the same evidence and witnesses as a criminal process, the greater the risk that the civil timetable will be affected.
For litigants, the broader point is clear. The question is not only what happened, or whether the claim can be proved. It is also which forum gets to examine the facts first and how that answer reshapes the process that follows.
Harry Dimoulis is a partner at Michelman Robinson, London
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