Lloyds Banking Group is defending two High Court claims worth up to £1.1 billion and £280 million over an alleged £1.2 billion lending fraud involving collapsed production company Arena Television.
The cases, brought by insolvency practitioners, are due to go to trial in October 2028. Lloyds denies allegations that it had sufficient information to suspect fraud and should have stopped payments connected with the scheme.
Arena Television, which was based in Surrey and worked on major events including the Glastonbury festival for the BBC, collapsed in November 2021. Its failure followed allegations that the company had borrowed money against television and broadcasting equipment that either did not exist or had already been pledged to other lenders.
Liquidators appointed by Kroll allege that Arena owner Richard Yeowart misappropriated more than £1.2 billion in asset-backed lending involving more than 55 lenders, including Lloyds and its Bank of Scotland subsidiary.
According to the liquidators, Yeowart removed genuine serial numbers from broadcasting equipment and replaced them with forged labels. The falsified identification numbers were allegedly used to secure multiple loans against the same equipment.
The insolvency practitioners also allege that Yeowart and his co-director Robert Hopkinson used a company called Sentinel to present itself as the purchaser of equipment. Sentinel allegedly raised finance against assets that were not genuine, with the money then transferred to Arena after a commission of about 1 per cent.
Sentinel administrators from Quantuma claim the company sold non-existent equipment to lenders, which then leased the supposed assets to Arena. Around £1.1 billion was allegedly transferred to Arena through the arrangement. Of 8,196 pieces of equipment listed in financing agreements, only 66 were found to exist, according to the administrators.
The Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation into the affair in 2022. Yeowart has since been declared bankrupt and his whereabouts are unknown. Hopkinson, who was located in France in 2023, has also been made bankrupt and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Sentinel’s administrators argue that Lloyds should have identified warning signs in the thousands of transactions passing through its account. They claim the bank should have stopped payments from at least 2012.
The claims concern the legal principle known as the Quincecare duty, which can require banks to take reasonable care before executing payment instructions where there are grounds to suspect an agent is attempting to defraud a customer.
Lloyds previously sought to have the Arena claims dismissed, but Mr Justice Butcher rejected its application for summary judgment in November 2025.
The bank said in its latest half-year results that it was continuing to defend the claims and that it was not possible to estimate their eventual outcome or financial impact.
A Lloyds spokeswoman said the bank was “robustly” defending the cases and argued that the claims wrongly sought to make it responsible for losses arising from a complex alleged fraud affecting more than 50 lenders.
