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Manolete Partners has told shareholders that trading in the current financial year is running in line with board expectations, with realised revenues ahead of the prior year and continued growth in the value of its forward book.

As reported in a regulatory announcement issued ahead of the company's Annual General Meeting, the AIM-listed insolvency claims financier said: "The Group's trading performance has been positive and in-line with the Board's expectations for FY27. Realised revenues are ahead of the prior year, and the value of the Group's forward book has continued to increase, driven by growth in both the number and average value of new cases signed."

The reference to growth in both case volume and average case size is notable for a funder whose economics depend on the pipeline of insolvency claims it acquires or funds. The company said it intends to provide a more detailed update on first-half trading in early October, following the close of the period, and will announce its Half Year Results as usual in November. All resolutions put to the AGM were subsequently passed.

Manolete describes itself as the UK's leading insolvency claims financing company, operating in a market it values at over £500 million annually. The business has financed and completed more than 1,400 cases. It says it is the only company in the insolvency litigation funding section to have been ranked Band 1 in Chambers on six occasions, and a five-time winner of the 'Insolvency Litigation Funder of the Year' award at the TRI Awards.

The update was issued by Chief Executive Officer Mena Halton and Chief Financial Officer Will Sawyer. Canaccord Genuity acts as the company's Nominated Adviser and Sole Broker.

Roughly £390 million appears to have passed through Woodville Consultants Ltd, the collapsed litigation funder whose failure prompted a Financial Conduct Authority warning about retail investors buying unregulated loan notes.

As reported by the Law Gazette, the business operated from an unremarkable office at 5 Gelliwastad Road in Pontypridd, South Wales, where the blinds are now drawn and no one answers the door. Its loan notes were promoted from Dubai Media City by a self-described certified financial planner who marketed them as "a simple and attractive way to make additional money without a big effort," accompanied by the slogan "Don't wait to invest; invest and wait."

Woodville entered administration on 16 July. Four weeks later the FCA issued a notice stating that "the recent failure of Woodville Consultants Ltd, a litigation funder that raised capital from retail investors through unregulated loan notes, shows the potential risk to investors." The regulator has signalled it wants to close the self-certification loophole that allows individuals to declare themselves "sophisticated" or "high-net worth" investors and thereby access products otherwise restricted from retail distribution. One investor told the publication the loss "will be life-changing for me… Stupid, I know."

Kroll is administering the estate alongside law firm Crowell & Moring, and is investigating whether money from newer investors was used to pay returns to earlier ones. Director Peter James Legge wrote to investors on 8 June stating: "We are now finally live with our funder and are in the process of completing the first drawdown." The administrators' third progress report found that "no such funding/refinancing arrangements appear to have been documented or progressed."

Paul Muscutt of Crowell & Moring said "a number of investigations are ongoing relating to the law firms, including how claims were introduced to the firms and how funds borrowed were applied."

The professional parties behind the UK collective action against Google have agreed to forgo £34 million of their contractual entitlement ahead of a Competition Appeal Tribunal hearing to approve the £260 million settlement.

As reported by Legal Futures, the settlement resolves claims brought on behalf of UK app developers over Google Play Store commission charges, and is agreed without any admission of liability. It represents roughly a quarter of the approximately £1 billion originally claimed. Of the total, £160 million is earmarked for the developer class, with £100 million allocated to lawyers, funders and insurers — down from the £134 million those parties were contractually entitled to receive.

The largest reduction falls on the funder. Bench Walk Advisors committed £27.7 million in capital to the proceedings. Its profit under the settlement drops to £56.2 million from the £82.8 million it could have claimed, producing a multiple of 2.99 times deployed capital. That figure was described in the submissions as "very much at the lower end" of returns in comparable funded competition claims. The after-the-event insurance premium has similarly been cut from £6 million to £4.1 million.

The claim is led by class representative Professor Barry Rodger, instructing Geradin Partners, with Robert O'Donoghue KC acting as counsel. "I remain confident in the class's liability case, and consider that it has good prospects of success at trial," Rodger said, adding that "the proceedings could not have been pursued on their present scale without substantial funding and professional work being provided at risk."

The Tribunal is scheduled to consider approval of the settlement and the associated distribution of proceeds at a hearing this month.

Stockholm-based Litigium Capital has appointed two new directors and expanded its investment committee, in a set of pan-Nordic hires that also marks a change at the top of the board.

According to a press release from Litigium Capital, Heidi Merikalla-Teir and Martin Hansson join the Board of Directors, while Anders Schäfer joins the Investment Committee. Merikalla-Teir, a Finnish national, serves as an arbitrator in domestic and international proceedings and as a mediator in commercial disputes, and was previously Managing Partner of a Finnish law firm and Secretary General of the Finland Arbitration Institute.

Hansson is a Swedish finance professional who has spent two decades investing across listed and unlisted assets. He is Chief Executive Officer of Galjaden Fastigheter and Ramlösa Shipping, and Chairman of the Boards of Latvian Forest Company and Link Property Investment.

Schäfer is a Danish attorney who previously practised at Plesner and Poul Schmith/Kammeradvokaten. He holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, lectures at the University of Copenhagen on competition law, damages and collective redress, and has contributed to European Commission research on litigation funding and class actions.

The appointments coincide with Christian Thiel stepping down as Chairman of the Board after more than five years. "Litigium Capital is now well positioned, and I believe this is the right moment to pass the baton to others who can take the company further," Thiel said. He remains Chairman of the firm's Investment Committee and a shareholder in both the management company and the fund.

Founded in 2020 and authorised as an investment fund manager by Sweden's Finansinspektionen, Litigium Capital is a member of the European Litigation Funding Association.

Two Malaysian jurists have published a retrospective on the Sulu arbitration, drawing a direct line from the failure of the funded US$15 billion claim against Malaysia to the statutory framework the country has since built around third-party funding of arbitration.

As reported by The Edge Malaysia, the piece is written by Tan Sri Zainun Ali, a former Federal Court judge, and barrister J J Chan. They note that the claim brought by parties describing themselves as heirs of the Sultan of Sulu "was reportedly backed by third-party litigation funding, attributed in public reports to Therium Capital Management," on the usual basis that the funder would take a return if the claim succeeded.

It did not. The Paris Court of Appeal annulled the award in full on 9 December 2025, holding that no valid arbitration agreement capable of binding Malaysia existed. The claimants were ordered to pay Malaysia €200,000 in costs, and separately lost costs orders in proceedings before the Netherlands Supreme Court.

The legislative response is the part with the longest reach. Malaysia's Arbitration (Amendment) Act 2024 took effect on 1 January 2026 and, in the authors' description, "brings third-party funding of arbitration within a clear statutory framework," requiring disclosure of both the funding arrangement and the identity of the funder.

For funders, the sequence is instructive: a single high-profile enforcement campaign against a sovereign produced a disclosure regime that will now apply to every funded arbitration seated in the jurisdiction.

A statewide survey of likely New York voters has found that close to four in five would do away with third-party litigation funding altogether, placing the practice among the least popular items in a broad tort reform poll.

According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, which commissioned the survey from Cygnal and published the results on 2 September, 79.7% said they support ending the arrangement under which outside investors finance lawsuits in return for a share of any recovery.

Litigation funding did not stand alone. The poll found 94.5% supporting prosecution of staged-accident fraud, 83.4% favouring limits on pain-and-suffering awards, 79.7% backing changes to workplace-injury liability rules, 77% supporting reforms aimed at frivolous lawsuits, and 66.6% in favour of amending the Scaffold Law, New York's absolute-liability statute for elevation-related construction injuries.

The clustering matters as much as the individual figures. Funding is being tested here alongside fraud and damages caps rather than as a discrete question about access to capital, and the framing offered to respondents describes investors financing lawsuits for a portion of the proceeds without reference to claimants who could not otherwise bring a case.

New York enacted consumer legal funding protections earlier this year, and the state has no disclosure statute covering commercial funding. Polling of this kind is likely to be cited in Albany as the next session approaches, and funders should expect the 79.7% figure to travel well beyond the survey it came from.

A Dubai court has given a defendant in a $456 million stablecoin dispute until 7 September to swear an affidavit identifying who has been paying his lawyers, in an unusually direct judicial demand for the source of a litigant's legal funding.

As reported by CryptoSlate, the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts made the order in *Techteryx Ltd v Aria Commodities DMCC and others*, the proceedings over $456 million transferred out of the reserves backing the TrueUSD token. Matthew William Brittain, one of the respondents, must disclose by 4pm Gulf Standard Time.

The order is specific about what is wanted. Brittain must give the amounts, dates and bank accounts behind fees paid to Quinn Emanuel, Horizons, Gall, Campbells and FTI Consulting, identify the original sources and ultimate beneficial owners of those funds, explain how the accounts were funded and produce supporting documents. It singles out $1,083,912.49 paid by Aria Bio Industries FZE on 31 October 2025.

Compliance is required "to the best of his ability," and the court indicated that further adjournments would need "the most extreme circumstances" backed by strong evidence. Sanctions are not automatic; Techteryx would have to apply. A committal hearing with a four-day estimate is listed for 26 October.

Most disclosure fights concern claimant-side funding. This one runs the other way, and shows a court treating the defence's funding chain as a matter it is entitled to see.

The founders of mass tort firm Keller Postman and litigation funder Gerchen Capital Partners have launched Atticor Group, a management services organisation that takes economic exposure to personal injury law firms while leaving the practices themselves in attorney hands.

As reported by Bloomberg Law, the venture brings together Ashley Keller and Warren Postman of Keller Postman with Adam Gerchen, chief executive of Gerchen Capital. Atticor describes itself as an AI-enabled platform serving the personal injury and single-event legal market, and provides administrative and back-office services to firms that contract with it.

The structure is the familiar one. Rather than acquiring a law firm, the MSO holds the operations that support it and supplies those services for a fee, allowing outside capital to participate in firm economics without running into the prohibition on non-lawyer ownership that applies in most US states. The stated purpose here is to finance technology upgrades that individual plaintiffs' firms would struggle to fund from cash flow.

More than six firms have signed on, according to the report, and the platform is described as well capitalised with an acquisition pipeline in place. Gerchen Capital closed its sixth fund at $600 million last year.

The launch is notable for who is behind it. Atticor places a mass tort firm's founders and an established commercial funder on the same side of a structure that several states are now moving to restrict, with Illinois and California both legislating this year on investor influence over law firms.

The Singapore International Commercial Court has upheld an arbitral tribunal's refusal to award third-party funding costs, rejecting arguments that denying such recovery offends public policy or amounts to a procedural failing reviewable under the Model Law.

As reported by the Wolters Kluwer Arbitration Blog, the decision in *DTH and another v DTF and others* [2026] SGHC(I) 5 arose from a joint venture dispute arbitrated under the SIAC Rules. The tribunal awarded the applicants approximately US$14.7 million but declined to award roughly US$14.6 million in funding costs, leaving them with minimal net recovery.

The applicants advanced two grounds. The first was that refusing funding costs conflicted with Singapore's public policy of promoting access to justice for impecunious parties. The court disagreed, holding that access to justice framed that narrowly does not rise to the level of public policy, and noting that Singapore's own SICC Rules expressly prohibit the recovery of third-party funding costs. A domestic rule barring recovery makes it difficult to characterise the same outcome in arbitration as contrary to national policy.

The second ground was that the tribunal had failed to comply with the agreed arbitral procedure. The court held that costs determinations fall outside the scope of procedural review under the Model Law, because they are substantive outcomes rather than questions of process. Framing an unfavourable costs result as a procedural defect does not convert it into a reviewable one.

On the underlying analysis, the tribunal had excluded the funding costs because certain fees were calculated as a percentage of the resolution amount rather than by reference to the principal advanced, placing them outside the statutory definitions governing third-party funding.

The ruling underscores that funders and funded parties in Singapore-seated arbitration cannot assume recovery of funding costs, and that how a funding agreement structures its return may determine whether those costs are recoverable at all.