Finance and professional services company
Burford Capital, founded in 2009, provides specialized finance to the legal market.[2] It operates as a finance and professional services company worldwide with principal offices in New York, London and Chicago. The company offers financing to lawyers and clients engaged in litigation and arbitration,[3] asset recovery and other legal finance and advisory activities.[4]
History
Burford was founded by Christopher Bogart as a way to fund legal cases. The company was launched with Jonathan Molot in 2009.[5]
Burford has been publicly traded on the London AIM Stock Exchange (BUR:LN) [6] since October 2009 and issued further shares in a follow-on in 2010. In 2017, Burford received the AIM Award for Innovative Fundraising of the Year.[7]
On 7 August 2019, Muddy Waters Research cited issues[8][9] with Burford's fair value accounting practices and of misrepresenting its returns on invested capital and rates of return.[10] [11] Burford responded to each of the seven claims made by Muddy Waters, raising what it called “many factual inaccuracies”.[12] On 12 August 2019, Burford alleged it had identified evidence consistent with “illegal market manipulation” of its shares in the run up to a short attack.[13] Three days later, on 15 August 2019, Burford announced the replacement of its chief finance officer, the spouse of the chief executive officer.[14]
On 21 June 2021, Burford Capital announced it had successfully been paid $103m USD, resulting from the divorce settlement between Farkhad Akhmedov, a Russian businessman and Tatiana Akhmedova. [15] Bloomberg claims the total settlement was $186m USD. Burford Capital were successful in financing the litigation and were paid over 55% of the total settlement, which contributed $20m to its 2021 operating profit, according to Burford Capital. [16][17]
