Practical Law reported that this is the first decision where a bank in the United Kingdom had ever been held to be liable for breaching their duty to scrutinise customer transactions for possible fraud.

Singularis held a bank account with Daiwa Capital Markets Europe Limited which had very substantial sums of money in it.

Between 12 June and 27 July 2009 Mr Al Sanea gave eight separate instructions to Daiwa to make payments totalling approximately US$204 million out of Singularis' account.

The trial initially came before Rose J, who handed down a lengthy judgment,[5] in which she held that the bank had breached its duty to the customer, holding that "Any reasonable banker would have realised that there were many obvious signs that Mr Al Sanea was perpetrating a fraud on the company."

However she reduced the claim by 25% to reflect the contributory negligence of the customer in allowing Mr Al Sanea to act without restraint.

The situation here, the appellants submitted, was exactly the same: once Singularis is identified with Mr Al Sanea's fraud, it is a dishonest company, and was not relying on Daiwa to perform its Quincecare duty.

But the court went on to hold that, even if Mr Al Sanea's fraud were to be attributed, the claim would still be rejected because the directors of Singularis who were not acting fraudulently were indeed relying on Daiwa for the performance of its Quincecare duty.

But in this case Daiwa was not an ordinary third party; it was in breach of a pre-existing legal duty to Singularis to refrain from making the payments whilst the circumstances put it on inquiry.

The Court of Appeal broadly endorsed that, holding "the identity of those creditors cannot in this situation affect the question of whether the company in liquidation has a claim against Daiwa for breach of its Quincecare duty.

"[10] The Court of Appeal indicated that to set aside an assessment of contributory the appellants would need to show that the trial judge had either made an error of principle or reached a conclusion wholly outside the range of reasonable possibilities.

In this case "any reasonable banker would have realised that there were many obvious, even glaring, signs that Mr Al Sanea was perpetrating a fraud on the company when he instructed that the money be paid to other parts of his business operations".

[12] He also noted Daiwa sought to rely at every level of its argument on the existence of a prior fraud as a reason why it ought to have a successful defence.

[2] Despite the comments of Sir Geoffrey Vos about the unusual facts of the case, and how liability under the Quincecare duty will be rare,[12] inevitably banks will be concerned about being held liable for the frauds of others.