Eddie Jordan sues HSBC over ‘low risk’ £47million loan that resulted in £5million loss

Former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan is suing banking giant HSBC over a ‘low risk’ £47m loan that triggered a £5m loss.

Jordan, a customer of HSBC Private Bank since 2009, brought his case to the High Court in London alleging that his investment company, Pendragon Investment Holdings, was pressured to invest in the HSBC GIF Global Credit Floating Rate bond fund between a five-year period (2019-2023), which had been presented as ‘low risk’.

Eddie Jordan suing HSBC

As per a report from The Times , Jordan claims that HSBC had encouraged him to take out a £47m loan and invest it into the scheme, with only a ‘stressed scenario’ capable of triggering losses up to 0.98 per cent, while north of one per cent was not possible.

But, roughly 10 per cent of the value was lost, Pendragon apparently having made it clear that only a loss of up to one per cent was acceptable.

Jordan, who has a reported net worth of $600m (£470.3m), is seeking a £4.94m payment from HSBC, the difference between his investment total and the ultimate bond value.

HSBC apparently gained £2.9m in interest on the loan and £1.3 million in management fees.

Owner of the Jordan Grand Prix team, which competed in Formula 1 from 1991-2005, the 76-year-old Irishman remains a keen observer of the F1 scene, and recently cast a worrying verdict over the Audi F1 project, as the German brand prepares to join the grid in 2026 via a takeover of Sauber.

With the team to operate out of Sauber’s home of Hinwil, Switzerland, Jordan argued that Audi not setting up base in the UK is the “fundamentally wrong” approach.

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“I have a question mark over Audi in the full stop,” said Jordan on the Formula For Success podcast, where he appears alongside co-star David Coulthard, a 13-time F1 race winner.

“You and I are particularly good friends with Allan McNish [Audi motorsport director of coordination] and we wish him well there, but that’s a big, big task he’s taken on, big, big operation. To build a car, to run it out of Switzerland, with manufacturing, it’s a big, big, big ask.

“When did you last see a Swiss or a German [based] team win a world title?

“We saw what Toyota did. They came in, they tried to do it that way and then it didn’t work. And the amount of teams that has done, it’s cost fortunes.

“And so it’s a big ask. And I have to say there is no better way to run a race car than through Britain and particularly in that area of Northampton, Oxfordshire and various other places. They’ve just got such a wealth of knowledge. They’ve just got such a mindset of being able to win or to achieving or getting the best.

“And the suppliers in the region understand the complexities and the timeframes that people are on there. Whereas, you know, you go out and you order a piece of machinery to be done in Switzerland. They will give you a timeline of maybe needing four days, four weeks, four months and there’s nothing you can do.

“Whereas if you’re in the UK, you would just sit on top of that supplier and say, ‘If you don’t do this, you just don’t get any more work. So you better drop everything and do it.’ And they work night and day to get it done.

“So that’s the philosophy that there is a racing culture, it’s in the DNA, and I think what Audi are doing is fundamentally wrong.”

Audi already has one driver in place, with Nico Hulkenberg on his way to Sauber for 2025 ahead of the Audi transition.

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