I'm running about 90 pages behind on this thread but having had a quick glance at the judgment doc these two paragraphs from p73 caught my eye, apologies if they've been mentioned already. Basically turned the PL's own argument for the APT amendments against them with reference to excluding shareholder loans. How can these clowns be seen as fit to run a multi-billion pound organisation?
As Counsel for the PL accepted in opening, if the ambit of the APT Rules were limited only to APTs from Gulf States, that would be discriminatory and hence an object restriction because, looking at the economic and legal context, although such a measure would still be an
anti-circumvention measure, it would be aimed only at Gulf States and therefore objectively it would be discriminatory. We can see no difference in principle between that situation and limiting the ambit of the APT Rules to excluding shareholder loans.
Nor is the fact that it is open to all clubs to have access to such a subsidy an answer. Even if it could be said that this meant there was no discrimination in a formalistic sense, a difference of treatment between shareholder loans and other APTs is, in our view, an obvious distortion of
competition as it permits one form of subsidy, namely a non-commercial loan, but not another, a non-commercial sponsorship agreement. Both are equally injurious to the objective of the PSR.
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