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A UK court has dismissed XTX’s claim against Mazars in a case that centred on the accounting firm’s refusal to work for the trading group because its billionaire owner was Russian.
The London-based trading group sued Mazars in August 2022 for breaching the UK Equality Act by discriminating on the grounds of race when it declined to work for XTX as Alexander Gerko held Russian citizenship.
Gerko renounced his Russian citizenship in December 2022, about 10 months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and is not the subject of any sanctions. He also holds British citizenship.
The UK County Court for Central London last week dismissed XTX’s case against Mazars, saying the accounting group at the time only refused to provide services in France and the US, not the UK.
However, the judge said if XTX had been seeking services from Mazars in the UK, “there would have been direct discrimination”.
“The nationality of Dr Gerko was why the services were refused,” the judge said, according to a copy of the judgment seen by the Financial Times. “There is no basis for saying it was reasonably necessary not to engage with XTX simply due to Dr Gerko’s nationality.”
On Monday, Gerko said the judgment “confirms that Mazars’ actions would have been considered race discrimination” if XTX had been seeking services in the UK. He said XTX is based in Britain, where most of its employees live, adding: “We fully intend to appeal the judgment.”
“We were seeking a global consolidated payroll services provider (which includes also non-UK offices), it’s puzzling why it was determined that we were not seeking services in [the] UK,” Gerko said.
The judge said “it is clear from the emails that XTX approached Mazars Global for a transfer of all payrolls in 5 countries including the UK”, but that the services being sought initially were for France and the US.
XTX’s case against Mazars was brought after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when professional services groups faced pressure to refuse to work for Russian clients or companies with any perceived links to the country.
Mazars declined to comment. The group is now known as Forvis Mazars after a merger deal in late 2023.
Gerko is one of the UK’s richest people, worth $11.4bn according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, and earned £682mn from XTX’s trading profits last year. He is also the UK’s top individual taxpayer, according to Sunday Times estimates.
Gerko has vehemently denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, donated millions of pounds to Ukrainian charities, and called on the UK to expand its sanctions list.
XTX makes money by using vast amounts of computing power to detect tiny margins on millions of trades across currency, debt, equity, commodity and crypto markets. It handles about $250bn worth of trades every day and uses 25,000 artificial intelligence chips to power its trading.
