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Commercial

The European Litigation Funders Association to Launch Operations 

Omni Bridgeway, Deminor and Nivalion AG have teamed up to organize the launch of the European Litigation Funders Association (ELFA). Tasked with helping expand legal finance innovation across Europe, ELFA will represent industry best practices before international governments and legal associations. 

According to ELFA, Wieger Wielinga (Managing Director, EMEA Omni Bridgeway) will be the inaugural Chairman of the association. Additionally, Marcel Wegmuller (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Nivalion AG) and Charles Demoulin (Chief Investment Officer of Deminor) will serve as directors. 

ELFA says the organization will be open to legal finance franchises of all sizes. Prospective members will need to accept ELFA’s code of conduct. 

Read more about ELFA’s planned organizational activities here: ELFAssociqtion.eu.

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Community Spotlights

Community Spotlight: Jason Geisker, Head of Claims Funding Australia

By John Freund |

Jason Geisker is the Head of Claims Funding Australia (CFA), the litigation funding arm and wholly owned subsidiary of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers in Australia. He also serves as a Principal Lawyer at Maurice Blackburn’s Sydney office. With over 30 years of experience in commercial litigation and class actions, Jason has been recognized by his peers in the Doyles’ Guide rankings in Australia as a leading lawyer in commercial litigation/dispute resolution and class actions.

Jason holds a Master of Laws from the University of New South Wales. Since his admission to practice in 1996, he has been involved in several high-profile cases, including shareholder, investor, and consumer class actions. Notably, Jason led the Australian class actions against Volkswagen, Audi, and Skoda following the global ‘dieselgate’ scandal, resulting in settlements exceeding $170 million for over 100,000 Australian motorists.

In more recent years, as Head of CFA, Jason has collaborated with law firms across Australia and New Zealand to fund numerous commercial, insolvency, and class action claims. This includes a +NZD$300 million class action on behalf of approximately 3,000 people affected by the Southern Response insurance scandal following the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011. Under his leadership, CFA has achieved a 94% success rate in its funded cases. Jason is also the co-author of the Australian and New Zealand chapters of ‘The Third Party Funding Law Review’, an annual guide to the law and practice of third party funding, which is currently in its 8th edition.

Company Name and Description: Claims Funding Australia (CFA) is a litigation funding specialist with operations and offices throughout Australia. CFA funds a broad range of litigation in Australia and overseas. Backed by Maurice Blackburn, Australia’s leading class action law firm, CFA is part of the Claims Funding Group, providing third-party litigation funding services across Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Founded over a decade ago, CFA has been successful in 94% of its funded cases, recovering almost half a billion dollars for its clients. CFA leverages the expertise, resources, and reputation of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, whose advisory team includes some of the most experienced class action, insolvency, and commercial litigators in Australia. With the solid financial backing of Maurice Blackburn, CFA brings extensive knowledge and experience in litigation and dispute resolution, offering dependable litigation finance. CFA works with a diverse range of clients, including liquidators, trustees, individuals, businesses, and government agencies, sharing Maurice Blackburn’s commitment to providing greater access to justice and leveling the litigation playing field against well-resourced defendants.

Company Website: www.claimsfunding.com.au

Year Founded: 2014

Headquarters: Melbourne, Australia, (with offices in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth)

Area of Focus: Civil, commercial, and insolvency litigation funding across Australia, and class action and commercial litigation funding in New Zealand and Canada.

Member Quote: “Define your goal, assess the cost, commit to the journey, and relish the rewards with peace of mind and no regrets.”

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Case Developments Commercial

LitFin Highlights Momentum for Booking.com Class Actions

By Harry Moran |

Class actions focusing on anti-competitive behaviour by big businesses continue to provide ample opportunities for litigation funders to support claimants in their pursuit of justice, with European jurisdictions benefitting from a strong regulatory and oversight structure that seeks to clamp down on corporations abusing their dominant market positions.

In a LinkedIn post from LitFIn, the Prague-based litigation funder provides an update on the ongoing class actions brought against online travel agency Booking.com over its alleged anti-competitive practices. The allegations relate to the company’s use of pricing parity clauses, which have harmed hotels by preventing them from offering lower prices on their own websites or other online travel platforms. 

The travel company is now facing lawsuits across a number of jurisdictions in the European Union, with ongoing investigations in Italy, Sweden and France, following in the footsteps of regulators in Spain and Czech Republic who have already issued fines. One class action, brought by German hotels seeking compensation, has already begun proceedings in the Rechtbank Amsterdam.

Juraj Siska, partner at LitFin, provided the following statement: “The recent decision by Spain’s Competition Authority to fine Booking.com €413.2 million is a significant step forward in the fight against anti-competitive practices. Booking.com’s actions have affected market players across the EU, not only in Spain. Now is the time to end these practices and ensure compensation for damages already incurred.”

Concluding the post, LitFin emphasised their active involvement to support claimants seeking compensation in the Booking.com class actions, and encouraged any potentially affected parties to contact them.

Commercial Legal Innovation

Maturation of the Litigation Funding Industry Brings New Opportunities and Challenges

By Harry Moran |

As we enter the final months of 2024, it is only natural for industry commentators and analysts to lay out their observations on the state of litigation finance, seeking to understand how third-party funding has evolved this year.

A column in Bloomberg Law, written by former lawyer turned writer David Lat, examines the current state of the litigation funding industry and examines the changing face of the market, from its growing successes to the evolution of issues it faces. The column draws upon Lat’s time at the LitFinCon event hosted in September of this year, featuring insights from industry leaders who spoke at the conference.

One of Lat’s primary observations is the transformation of litigation funding from a fringe activity in the legal sector, to a mainstream stable that has transformed the way claimants and law firms pursue disputes. Lat highlights this change in attitudes within law firms, quoting Casey Grabenstein of Saul Ewing, who noted that his firm was somewhat reluctant to embrace litigation funding”, whilst Mayer Brown’s Michael Lackey emphasized that third-party funding “was just anathema”, a decade ago. Nowadays, these attitudes have largely been reversed, with Lackey himself noting that in today’s legal landscape “virtually every large law firm that does litigation probably has a funded case somewhere.”

Speaking to one of the prominent topics discussed at LitFinCon, Lat explains that with the startling growth experienced by the litigation finance market, the issue of the ‘commoditization’ of funding continues to be raised. Across the speakers at the event, Lat highlights that the general view of funders and other parties is that the industry has moved towards maturation rather than commoditization, with a lack of standardization across funding arrangements being absent across the industry. Looking to the future of third-party funding, Lat says that industry leaders continue to take a cautiously optimistic view, and quotes Mani Walia of Siltstone Capital who said, “ours is a young industry, and we need to make sure that there are no bad apples.”

In the spirit of this cautious attitude towards ‘bad apples’ and the potential for issues to arise, Lat also addresses the ways in which opposition to and criticism of the funding industry has changed with its maturation. Lat describes this transformation as being a move away from issues of legality to issues of disclosure, highlighting the ongoing debates among lawmakers and the judiciary as to what level of mandatory disclosure should be required for funding arrangements.