A new ruling in John Fredriksen's long-running case against Peter Bosworth and Colin Hurley offers fresh insight into the management practices of the shipowning tycoon.
He has told the English High Court that executives "ran the show" at Arcadia Energy.
Bosworth has presented himself and his associate as micromanaged employees following orders, however. That makes a difference in whether the case belongs in a Swiss court, as the defendants want, or in London, where Fredriksen would prefer to have it.
"[Chief executive Bosworth and chief financial officer Colin Hurley] had and exercised control and autonomy," Fredriksen testified to the English High Court in a statement dated 18 August.
"They were able to, and did, determine how the Arcadia Group operated.
"[It] was Mr Bosworth and Mr Hurley who, in simple terms, 'ran the show' at the Arcadia Group," Fredriksen told the court.
He said the two traders "were left to get on and run the business as they saw fit".
Another jurisdictional difficulty is that Fredriksen's companies have been structured under various country's laws so as to minimise the tax burden of each subsidiary. This sometimes requires group subsidiaries and chief executives to portray themselves as more autonomous than they are, according to testimony in the case.
Further, the two traders had acted as de facto chief executive and chief financial officer of an Arcadia group, when legally speaking they held those positions within only certain Arcadia companies.
Bosworth indicated he was chief executive in name only, with power exercised instead by Fredriksen's Farahead Holdings.
"The ultimate decision-making power ... lay with Farahead (and Mr John Fredriksen and Mr Tor Olav Troim in particular)," he said in a witness statement. "I received my instructions from them and was subject to their direction and control."
Bosworth described an intense approach to overseeing profit and loss, counterparty exposure, and position sizes.
"There were no limits on [Fredriksen's] power to tell Arcadia's management, including the CEO, CFO and COO, what to do," Bosworth said in a witness statement dated 9 September 2020.
"In reality, Farahead's board acted at the direction of, and effectively included, John Fredriksen and Tor Olav Troim," Bosworth said in another statement. "This was the Arcadia Group's ultimate management and decision-making body."
