The UK’s financial watchdog has fined and banned a British financier over bids he made to buy a bank and Reading Football Club, during which he falsely claimed to own a €200mn bond portfolio.
Paul Taylor, who has been involved in several large deals
over the past three decades, “acted dishonestly and with a lack of integrity”
during both sets of negotiations, the Financial Conduct Authority said on
Friday, fining him £489,000. Taylor, a former bricklayer turned financier
who has previously been linked to the Qatar royal family, made “false and
misleading statements” while he was chief executive of the London-based firm
Blue Horizon Asset Management, according to the FCA. He has also been barred
from working in financial services.
In December 2023, during negotiations over the £37mn
purchase of a UK bank, Taylor supported his position with documents claiming he
was the ultimate beneficial owner of a €200mn bond portfolio, the FCA said. The
claims triggered an exclusivity period where a seller agrees to negotiate with
only one buyer. After anomalies over his ownership were found in October 2024,
Taylor advised Blue Horizon to tell the FCA that it had provided the regulator
with false information.
Taylor, who was involved in an attempt to buy Chelsea
Football Club in 2002, had also claimed to own the bond portfolio in a separate
negotiation to buy Reading Football Club in 2024. After Blue Horizon
informed the FCA that it had provided false information, Taylor and the asset
manager commissioned an internal investigation by a law firm, whose findings
were provided to the regulator.
Taylor, 63, has had an unlikely path in the world of
finance, starting as a bricklayer before getting a job as a cashier at NatWest,
where he rose to lead the structured finance business, according to press
reports.
The British financier
later joined the business of the Tchenguiz property tycoons and set up a joint
venture with the Qatari royal family called Three Delta, through which they
made a number of purchases, including nursing home operator Four Seasons.
Taylor also helped orchestrate the Qatari stake in J Sainsbury through a
separate vehicle called Delta Two and pitched an offer for them to buy the
supermarket group at a £12bn valuation in 2007. Taylor’s relationship with the
Qatari royals broke down in 2008.
He was reported to have once spent £21,000 on a trading
jacket purportedly worn by rogue trader Nick Leeson in an auction by the
liquidator of Barings Bank.
Reading have had a lot of misfortune with owners and bidders.
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