The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of HMRC in the BlackRock appeal, saying that the ‘sole raison d’être was to enter into the loans to obtain tax advantages for the BlackRock group’, which had been developed with tax advice from EY and a UK barrister. 

The appeal centred around asset management giant BlackRock's acquisition of the worldwide business of Barclays Global Investors (BGI US) for $13.5bn (£10.8bn) in 2009, which was funded through various BlackRock limited liability corporations (LLCs).

BlackRock appealed a decision from the Upper Tribunal in 2022 to dismiss an appeal from BlackRock Holdco 5 LLC (LLC5), one of three subsidiaries set up to facilitate the Barclays acquisition through a series of intragroup loans. Originally the First Tier Tribunal ruled in favour of BlackRock in 2019 on ‘allowance purpose', drawing on an old case called Mallalieu from 1983.