Yodel Delivery Network Ltd v Corlett [2025] EWHC 1435 (Ch)

27th June 2025

On 11 June 2025, the High Court dismissed an application for an injunction in a “battle for control” of the well-known home delivery company, Yodel. In deciding that control should remain with Yodel’s current shareholders and directors pending trial, David Mohyuddin KC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge) determined that, although there was a serious issue to be tried, damages would be an adequate remedy if the Applicants were to succeed at trial, that the cross-undertaking in damages offered by the Applicants was not adequate and that in any event the balance of convenience weighed against granting the injunction.

The underlying proceedings concerned counterclaims brought by Shift Global Holdings Limited (“Shift”) and Corja Holdings Limited (“Corja”). Shift and Corja seek specific performance of an alleged contractual entitlement to around 1.8 billion ordinary shares in Yodel (giving them a majority stake) pursuant to the terms of warrants granted in June 2024. Yodel contests that counterclaim in full, including on the bases that the warrants were forgeries, in fact created after the sale of Yodel to its current parent company, Judge Logistics Limited (“Judge”), and that it would have anyway been a breach of fiduciary duty to grant such warrants.

Yodel is currently loss-making, but the parent company of Judge, InPost UK Limited, is in the process of implementing what it describes as a ‘transformation plan’ for Yodel. Shift and Corja have their own plans for Yodel. They brought their applications for an injunction on the basis that, by the time the counterclaim for specific performance had been tried, InPost’s transformation plan for the business will have advanced to such an extent that Shift and Corja will be unable to implement their own plan, such that it was necessary for the court to hold the ring by prohibiting that transformation.

Edward Davies KC and Jack Rivett appeared for the Applicants, instructed by Wordley Partnership and Richard Slade & Partners LLP. Andrew Thompson KC, Ben Griffiths and Samuel Parsons appeared for the Respondent, with assistance from Olivia Tolson, instructed by Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.

The full Judgment can be found here.