Apollo XI Limited v Nexedge Markets Limited
| Court | High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Commercial Court |
| Judge | Mr Nigel Cooper KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge |
| Hearing | 1 July 2026 |
| Judgment | 28 August 2026 |
| Claimant, respondent to the application | Apollo XI Limited |
| Defendant, applicant | Nexedge Markets Limited |
| Freezing injunction | Granted by Cheema-Grubb J on 16 April 2025, discharged by Saini J on 17 June 2025, [2025] EWHC 1488 (KB) |
| Case reference | CL-2025-000188 |
Summary
Apollo XI Limited advanced Nexedge Markets Limited ten million United States dollars under a ten year unsecured loan dated 21 August 2024. The relationship behind the loan collapsed. Apollo applied without notice and obtained a freezing injunction on 16 April 2025, relying on a recording of calls made inside the Nexedge office. On 17 June 2025 Saini J discharged it as wrongly obtained, finding serious failures of full and frank disclosure, no good arguable case and no risk of dissipation.
Nexedge applied to enforce the cross-undertaking in damages and for an inquiry into the loss the order had caused. Apollo resisted on one ground, that Nexedge had suffered no recoverable loss. Nexedge won. Nothing has yet been decided about whether it lost anything, or how much.
Background and facts
Nexedge is an introducing broker in contracts for difference, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. In December 2024 it applied to vary its permission so that it could hold client money and deal directly with professional clients, on a plan projecting profits after tax of 2.63 million pounds by 2027 to 2028. Apollo is a special purpose vehicle incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.
On 11 April 2025 calls made in the Nexedge office were recorded without the knowledge of the person making them, and Apollo relied on that recording when it applied without notice four days later. Nexedge told the regulator about the injunction on 12 May 2025 and was told its application could not go forward until the effect of the order had been considered. It withdrew that application in November 2025. On 24 December 2025 Apollo abandoned the claim it had used to obtain the injunction and substituted one resting only on events after the discharge.
The issue
Enforcing a cross-undertaking runs in two stages: whether the court should order it enforced at all, and then what loss the order caused. Only the first was before the court.
Apollo confirmed it was no longer alleging abuse of process and limited itself to causation, saying the correspondence with the regulator showed no credible evidence of loss caused by the injunction rather than by the underlying claim. Nexedge answered that this was an attempt to try the inquiry before it had begun.
The decision
The presumption in favour of an inquiry is strong and the burden of displacing it lay on Apollo. Special circumstances can defeat it, one being a case where the court is satisfied no damage has been suffered, but that category exists to stop a pointless inquiry into trivial loss, not to give a second hearing on the merits.
Where a freezing injunction is discharged, an inquiry should follow almost as of right.Nigel Cooper KC, paragraph 37
The threshold was the one that applies on summary judgment: a realistic prospect, not a merely arguable one, of showing the order caused loss.
There should be no protracted investigation at the permission stage to determine whether a defendant has suffered loss. The question is only whether the defendant has a credible case that the freezing injunction has caused it loss.Nigel Cooper KC, paragraph 37
Four features told against Apollo: how the recording was obtained, the failure of the original claim to meet even the good arguable case threshold, the abandonment of that claim, and an email of 3 June 2025 inviting the staff and clients of Nexedge to the return date with costs paid. Apollo denies sending it; the judge held there was a credibly arguable case it had.
there is a credibly arguable case, to say the least, that Apollo commenced the Original Claim and sought the Freezing Injunction with the intention of causing loss and damage to NexedgeNigel Cooper KC, paragraph 53
He was careful about how far that went. The Nexedge counterclaims for breach of confidence, malicious prosecution and unlawful means conspiracy are at present only arguable.
I accept that there has not been any judicial finding that Apollo made the Original Claim dishonestly or maliciouslyNigel Cooper KC, paragraph 44
On causation he accepted that Nexedge has a realistic prospect of establishing at the inquiry that Apollo cannot rely on its own wrong, so that the original claim falls to be discounted, and separately that it is realistically arguable the injunction and that claim were concurrent causes. He decided neither point.
The judge found credible evidence behind each of the four heads advanced: delay to the regulatory application, reputational damage, business disruption, and the failure of that application. Nexedge puts its loss above five million pounds. The inquiry will be heard with the claim and counterclaim, with directions at the case management conference on 9 September 2026.
Practical implications
A cross-undertaking in damages is the price of relief granted on one side's account of the facts, and it is enforced almost automatically once the order falls. Anyone weighing a without notice freezing order against a contractor or an employer should price that exposure before applying, not after the return date.
Discharge for want of full and frank disclosure does more than remove the order. The findings made on discharge carry into the permission stage and colour how the court reads the applicant's account of causation.
Abandoning the claim that justified the injunction removes the best argument against causation, because it leaves nothing running alongside the order to which the damage can be attributed. The heads of loss are wide: lost management time, reputational damage, business disruption and a lost chance are all recoverable in principle, so a respondent cannot treat unquantified damage as none.
Practice points
- Treat the cross-undertaking as a real liability at the point of instruction. Advise the client in writing what it is exposed to if the order falls, and keep the record of that advice.
- Full and frank disclosure at the without notice hearing is where these cases are won and lost. Put the weaknesses of the merits and the thinness of the dissipation evidence before the judge, because leaving them out costs the order and then funds the inquiry.
- Do not expect to defeat an inquiry by document analysis. The permission stage is not the place to test a witness, and inviting the court to weigh correspondence against untested statements will be refused as a mini trial.
- Stop a client who wants publicity for an order it has obtained. An email inviting the other side's staff, clients and partners to the return date was treated as material from which purpose could arguably be inferred, and the denial that it had been sent did not dispose of the point.
- If you abandon the pleaded case that supported the injunction, expect to lose the argument that the claim rather than the order did the harm. Amending to a new claim built on later facts does not fill that gap.
- Record the disposal accurately. Permission to enforce is stage one. No loss has been proved, no amount assessed, and no finding of dishonesty made against the party that obtained the order.