Upon opening a bank account a company has undertaken, as required by the Anti-Money Laundering laws and the Know Your Customer procedures, to promptly inform the bank of any change in the control over the corporation. The controlling shareholder sold its shares but reported it to the bank only after five weeks and therefore the bank closed the account and refused to continue to provide the company with banking services.
The Court held that a banking corporation may not unreasonably refuse to provide services. Although a company is obligated to report to the bank of any change of control and was late in in doing so, but this was after 3 years of duly managing the account so there was no reason to close the account only due to the delay. Closing the account just because of a delay in reporting is not reasonable, as opposed to closing the account due to a "crisis of confidence" stemming from disagreements between a bank and a client.