Folding bicycle manufacturer Brompton Bicycle is set to sue its former accounting and tax adviser, AAB Group, for professional negligence, City AM can reveal.

London-based Brompton has launched legal action in the High Court against the Scottish-headquartered business advisory firm, according to court records. The defendants are listed as AAB Business & Tax Advisory LLP, AAB Customs, and Woodward Trade Consulting. AAB, which grew out of the Aberdeen accountancy firm Anderson Anderson & Brown, has expanded in recent years through a run of acquisitions of mid-sized accountancy and advisory businesses across the UK and Ireland.

AAB Business & Tax Advisory is the entity behind AAB’s general business consulting, accounting, and tax advisory services. Around the time of Brexit, AAB expanded its customs duty and international trade services by launching AAB Customs, an entity responsible for customs, indirect tax, and global trade consultancy. That expansion coincided with the biggest shake-up of UK-EU trade in decades: after the Brexit transition period ended in December 2020, goods moving between Britain and the bloc became subject to customs declarations and rules-of-origin checks that had not applied inside the single market, lifting demand for customs and trade advice among British importers and exporters.

Woodward Trade Consulting, managed by Paul Woodward, was dissolved in June 2025. During that period, Woodward also served as a senior customs consultant at AAB, from August 2022 to February 2024.

City AM understands that AAB stopped working for Brompton Bicycle in January 2024. While the specifics of the case are not yet known, it is listed as a professional negligence claim and was filed by Brompton’s lawyers at City-based law firm HFW.

The claim has been submitted to the Commercial Court, a specialised court within the High Court that deals with complex and high-value cases. While the general High Court threshold is £100,000, the Commercial Court generally expects claims to be worth more than £3m. To succeed, Brompton will need to establish that its former advisers owed it a duty of care, breached that duty, and that any breach caused quantifiable financial loss — the standard tests for professional negligence claims in England and Wales.

Brompton Bicycle, founded in 1976 by engineer Andrew Ritchie, is one of the UK’s best-known bicycle makers, designing and hand-building its folding bikes at its factory in Greenford, west London. The compact folding design has long been associated with urban commuting in the UK and abroad, and the firm remains one of only a handful of volume bicycle manufacturers still producing in Britain.

The dispute is at an early stage, and the substance of the allegations — including which areas of advice are challenged and what losses are claimed — is expected to become clearer as court filings are exchanged. AAB, Mr Woodward, HFW, and Brompton Bicycle were approached for comment.

Source: City AM