High Court upholds tribunal’s decision on distributing a £200 million Mastercard settlement
The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenge brought by litigation funder Innsworth Capital Limited over the distribution of a £200 million settlement in the long-running Mastercard collective action.
In a judgment handed down on 10 June 2026, Lord Justice Males, with Mr Justice Morris agreeing, upheld a decision of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) concerning how the settlement proceeds should be divided between consumers, the litigation funder and other recipients.
The dispute arose from collective proceedings brought against Mastercard by Walter Merricks CBE on behalf of an estimated 44 million UK consumers. The claim alleged that unlawful interchange fees had inflated prices paid by consumers over many years. Although damages were originally claimed at around £14 billion, the case ultimately settled for £200 million after more than eight years of litigation.
Innsworth, which funded the proceedings, challenged the CAT’s approach to distributing the settlement funds. The funder argued that it should receive a significantly larger share of the proceeds and sought to overturn aspects of the tribunal’s allocation model.
The CAT had previously approved the settlement and adopted a three-pot structure for distribution. Under that arrangement, £100 million was allocated to class members, while Innsworth was entitled to recover its litigation expenditure, estimated at between £41 million and £46 million. The tribunal also determined that the funder should receive a profit equivalent to 50% of its expenditure. Any remaining funds could ultimately benefit the Access to Justice Foundation if they were not otherwise distributed.
The High Court examined several grounds advanced by Innsworth, including claims that the CAT misunderstood Australian case law when assessing an appropriate return for litigation funding and that it failed to consider relevant financial factors. The court accepted that the tribunal may have misunderstood one aspect of Australian authority relating to return-on-investment calculations. However, Lord Justice Males concluded that any such error did not undermine the overall reasoning or outcome.
The judgment emphasised that the CAT had relied on a range of considerations, including what it described as the “very poor” outcome achieved for the class compared with the scale of the original claim. The court noted that the collective proceedings regime exists primarily for the benefit of class members rather than lawyers or funders, while also recognising the important role played by commercial litigation funding.
Summarising the outcome, Lord Justice Males said the CAT had been entitled to conclude that reimbursement of Innsworth’s costs together with a 50% profit represented a just and reasonable return. The court refused permission on additional grounds and dismissed the judicial review claim.