The question sounds like it should have been answered decades ago: if someone alleges they were induced by fraud to sign a personal guarantee, does the limitation clock start ticking when they sign - or only when the lender demands payment?
In a ruling handed down on September 9, 2026, the High Court said the answer is clear. For an unsecured personal guarantee, time does not run until the guarantee is called. And the court noted, with some surprise, that the point appeared never to have been directly decided before.
The case, Richardson v Robertson & Ors [2026] EWHC 2286 (Ch), sits at the intersection of financial advisory disputes and rugby. At its centre is the investor who in 2013 acquired the Maltese holding company that controlled Wasps rugby club, and the wealth management firm that subsequently advised him on restructuring his ownership.
Between 2015 and 2017, two of the defendants - an individual adviser and Hottinger Private Office Limited, the FCA-regulated multi-family private office - recommended the investor restructure his holdings using a Maltese vehicle known as a SICAV. In April 2017, the investor exchanged his shares in the holding company for "investor shares" in a sub-fund of a new entity. What he did not realise, according to his claim, was that those shares carried no voting rights. Legal ownership and control of the holding company - and through it, Wasps Holdings Limited - had passed to the SICAV, which was controlled by an employee of Hottinger Private Office.
The investor says he was repeatedly told he remained the "ultimate beneficial owner." In September 2017, the adviser sent him a corporate structure chart with his name at the top, alongside the label "UBO." The claim alleges this was false, and the defendants knew it was false.
The investor further contends that documents obtained through disclosure showed that shortly before the structure chart was created, another Hottinger employee had told the adviser that requests to show the investor at the top of such a chart would "prove something that isn't the case."
None of these allegations have been tested at trial. The court's ruling dealt only with whether the investor could amend his existing claim to add a new cause of action in deceit - a question that turned entirely on limitation.
In around October 2018, AIB Group (UK) Limited agreed to provide Wasps Holdings with a bank overdraft. One condition was that the investor give a personal guarantee, capped at £2.5 million in principal. The investor says he signed the guarantee in reliance on the structure chart's representation that he was the ultimate beneficial owner of the company being funded.
The guarantee was unsecured against any personal property. But it came with teeth. A subordination clause immediately ranked any debts owed to the investor by the group companies below AIB's claims. A restriction clause barred the investor from taking security from the debtor companies without the bank's written consent. A set-off clause gave AIB a contractual lien over any of the investor's assets held by the bank. And the guarantee fixed interest and cost liabilities by reference to the date of demand - meaning the investor's total exposure could not be calculated until AIB actually called.
According to the court filings, AIB terminated the overdraft on June 30, 2022. On August 3, 2022, it sent a formal demand. And on April 29, 2025, AIB issued proceedings against the investor to enforce the guarantee.
That enforcement action prompted the investor to seek permission to add the deceit claim against the adviser and Hottinger Private Office. The investor's original claim had been issued on April 6, 2023. If time ran from the date he signed the guarantee in October 2018, the six-year limitation period would have expired in October 2024, making the amendment too late. If time ran from the demand in August 2022, the claim was comfortably within time.
The defendants argued the investor suffered detriment the moment he signed. The guarantee imposed immediate obligations - subordination of debts, restrictions on taking security, a lien over bank accounts. These were real impingements on his rights, they said, not mere future possibilities.
The court disagreed. Drawing on the House of Lords' unanimous decision in Law Society v Sephton [2006] 2 AC 543, and the High Court of Australia's earlier ruling in Wardley Australia v State of Western Australia (1992) 175 CLR 514 (which the House of Lords expressly endorsed), the deputy judge held that the core principle is straightforward: a contingent liability is not damage until the contingency occurs. The possibility of an obligation to pay money in the future is not, by itself, loss.
The Court of Appeal had previously explained in Axa Insurance v Akther & Darby [2009] EWCA Civ 1166 that the effect of Sephton was that if a person gave a personal guarantee, unsecured on any property of theirs, time would not begin to run for claims against their professional adviser until a call was made on the guarantee. The deputy judge held that this reasoning applied with equal force to a claim in deceit.
The court accepted that the guarantee's various clauses had an immediate effect on the investor's legal position, and that this effect was arguably detrimental. But that was not enough. There had to be "measurable loss" beyond the mere incurring of a contingent liability. The clauses the defendants pointed to did not cross that threshold.
The defendants also argued this was a "bilateral" transaction - the investor received the benefit of AIB extending credit to the group - and that cases involving bilateral transactions are treated differently. The court rejected this too, holding that the guarantee plainly fell within the class of transaction described in Sephton: the execution of an unsecured guarantee by a third party who is not a party to the transaction under which the guaranteed liabilities arise.
Permission to amend was granted. The limitation defence was ruled not merely weak but not reasonably arguable.
For professional indemnity insurers and claims teams handling financial advisory disputes, the ruling draws a firm line: where a client alleges they were induced by fraud to enter an unsecured personal guarantee, the limitation period begins when the guarantee is called - not when it is signed. That distinction could materially affect notification timing, coverage trigger analysis, and the viability of late-emerging claims.
