The court was bound by the Court of Appeal decision in VTB v Nutritek which decided that it was not possible to pierce the corporate veil so as to treat a puppet company as anything other than a legal person formally distinct from the puppeteer. The claimants were not entitled to raise the corporate veil in order to reveal the beneficial owners of the defendant offshore companies as the true parties to the charterparties and their English jurisdiction clauses (Antonio Gramsci Shipping Corp v Recoletos Ltd).