A clause in a guarantee providing that the guarantor's obligations are unconditional and not affected by anything that would otherwise release the guarantor is effective to prevent a breach of the bank's obligation of confidentiality from discharging the guarantee, at least where the breach is negligent or inadvertent rather than deliberate or malicious. The banker's duty of confidentiality recognised in Tournier does not extend to guarantors who are not also customers of the bank, and no such term will be implied in fact under the BP Refinery test. The question whether such an unconditional clause would be effective in the case of deliberate or malicious breach was expressly left open.
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