Insights

On 2 June 2025 the Civil Justice Council (a UK public body that advises on civil justice and civil procedure) (“CJC”) issued its Review of Litigation Funding Final Report (the “Report”). The CJC has provided comprehensive recommendations on the regulation and reform of litigation funding in England and Wales. The highlight recommendation of the Report is for the UK Government to remove third party litigation funding from the regulations and requirements of the Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2013 (“DBA Regulations”), reversing the judgment of the Supreme Court in PACCAR.[1] Meanwhile, the UK Court of Appeal has recently endorsed a position that the Competition Appeal Tribunal (“CAT”) may order that third party funders of collective proceedings be paid first from litigation proceeds before claimants according to waterfall provisions in their funding agreements.

From the inception of the secondary market for syndicated bank loans some 35 years ago, we have seen continuous movement in the direction of increased liquidity for the asset, but recent developments in this market point toward a reversal of this trend.

In a recent UK Court of Appeal judgment in what is known as “the motor finance cases” (see Johnson v FirstRand Bank, Wrench v FirstRand Bank and Hopcraft v Close Brothers Limited, which appeals were all heard together), the Court has shone a spotlight on the issue of commissions paid by financiers to brokers and determined that, in some cases, they may be considered “bribes” under UK law. 

On September 30, 2024, the SEC announced the settlement of an enforcement action against Marathon Asset Management, L.P. (Marathon) for failing to implement proper policies and procedures to prevent the misuse of material nonpublic information (MNPI).  The issue stemmed from Marathon’s participation in ad hoc creditors’ committees, where the firm inadvertently received MNPI through its consultants and advisers.  This enforcement action highlights the SEC’s intense focus on the participation by investors in ad hoc creditors’ committees and the importance of implementing robust MNPI controls when doing so.

On August 26, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had settled charges with Sound Point Capital Management, LP, a New York-based registered investment adviser, for inadequate policies and procedures regarding its handling of material nonpublic information (“MNPI”) and related compliance deficiencies in its collateralized loan obligations (“CLOs”) trading activities. Sound Point agreed to pay a $1.8 million civil penalty in addition to other remedial measures. Notably, the SEC did not charge the investment adviser or its employees with violating SEC Rule 10b-5.

On February 20, 2024, the Supreme Court finally brought the curtain down on the Kirschner v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. et al., action when it denied Plaintiff’s petition for certiorari that challenged the Second Circuit Court of Appeal’s determination that syndicated bank loans were not “securities.” While the Second Circuit made that decision in August, fears of significant market disruption were raised again in December, when the plaintiff asked the Supreme Court to review the case. But, as a result of the denial of cert, the Second Circuit decision stands, and for the time being, syndicated term loans will not be subject to securities regulation.

In this alert we discuss recent developments in the regulation of third party funding since R (on the application of PACCAR Inc & Ors) v Competition Appeal Tribunal & Ors [2023] UKSC 28, (“PACCAR”) which we discussed in our prior alert. In Alex Neill Class Representative Limited v Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited et al. [2023] CAT 73, the first analysis of a third-party litigation funding agreement (“LFA”) to take place since PACCAR, finding that an optional payment mechanism based on a cut of damages “only to the extent enforceable and permitted by applicable law” will not render the whole LFA an unenforceable damages-based agreement (“DBA”). Meanwhile, the government intends to enact a legislative amendment to make non-lawyer LFAs for group opt-out competition proceedings enforceable, but calls have quickly begun for the government to go further.

In R (on the application of PACCAR Inc & Ors) v Competition Appeal Tribunal & Ors [2023] UKSC 28, the U.K. Supreme Court has declared litigation funding agreements based on a cut of damages to need to comply with the Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2013, while the Court of Appeal in Evans & O’Higgins v Barclays [2023] EWCA Civ 876 expands the scope of likely competition opt out litigation approval.

In continuing with its efforts to promote greater liquidity and certainty in the U.S. secondary loan trading market, on July 21, 2023, The Loan Syndications and Trading Association, Inc. (the "LSTA") officially released a revised suite of secondary market loan trading forms, which revised forms are effective for LSTA trades entered into on or after such date. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey adopted a new local rule, starting on June 21, 2021, requiring disclosure by litigants regarding the use of litigation funding. While several federal courts have implemented rules requiring disclosure of the existence and identity of litigation funders, New Jersey’s rule goes much further, requiring all parties to further disclose:

In today’s global secondary loan market, negotiating trade terms is not usually a protracted process, but rather an efficient set of communications, where the parties reach agreement on only the most material trade terms and trust that market documentation frameworks and trading conventions will supply the remaining terms. Whether a trade will be documented as a “par” trade or a “distressed” trade, however, is one of the more important terms that is generally addressed in the earliest communications between the trading parties.

As the economic impact of COVID-19 continues to unfold, opportunities to purchase debt and claims at attractive prices from sellers who may be starved for liquidity have started to increase. In such periods of market dislocation, even good-faith purchasers may risk claims of “constructive fraudulent transfer”, “constructive fraudulent conveyance”, or a similar “claw-back” suit if the seller was (i) insolvent at the time of the transaction, or (ii) rendered insolvent as result of the transaction. Claw-back causes of action are typically asserted by spurned creditors of the seller that have unsatisfied debts, or by bankruptcy trustees or official committees of unsecured creditors if the seller subsequently files for bankruptcy.

Over the last several years, investors of all stripes had been flocking to the novel asset class of litigation finance. Litigation finance is the art of deploying capital today in order to benefit from a favorable litigation outcome in the future. The ability of litigation finance to generate high, non-market correlated returns during the recent period of record low interest rates and record high equity market values made the area especially appealing to investors and led to a large influx of capital. But much has changed in the past few months. This article discusses the current pandemic and the macroeconomic forces affecting the future of the litigation finance industry.

The recent disruption to financial markets is putting new strains on the process of closing trades of syndicated bank loans, bankruptcy claims, restructured equity and other types of assets traded by participants in the secondary credit markets. Although this market has long abided by the convention that parties are bound when traders agree to the material terms of a trade—not when a trade closes—rapid price movement and liquidity constraints have dramatically increased the likelihood of broken trades. Delays in trade settlements have also proliferated in the absence of any specific time frame mandated by regulation or the Loan Syndications and Trading Association. In these extraordinary times, we recommend that market participants focus on the following key issues: