Lee Drucker
An in depth article about a fabulous entrepreneur and promising cancer therapy almost derailed by impropriety. This was one of Lake Whillans’ first investments:
http://medcitynews.com/2015/03/entrepreneur-nearly-lost-company-heres-litigation-finance-helped-fight-back/
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About a month ago, I discussed the venture capital landscape, and why litigation funders are attractive partners for VCs and VC-backed companies in need of resources to adequately defend their businesses. A similar, but distinct, phenomenon exists in private equity.
Private equity firms (which invest in a broader class of companies and employ a wider array of value generating techniques than venture capital) share some common characteristics that make litigation finance a useful product within the industry.
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The Delaware Chancery Court handed down a favorable decision on work product protection for funding documents last week. Here are links to an article discussing the decision and the decision itself.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/litigation-finance-communications-protected-business-of-law
http://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/court-of-chancery/2015/ca-7841-vcp.html
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At Lake Whillans, I spend most of my time valuing litigation related assets. There are many considerations in this exercise, some of which I wrote about here.
Today, I am going to write about cost of capital, which is a key component in valuation. Aswath Damodaran recently wrote:
“If there were a contest for the most measured number in finance, the winner would be the cost of capital. Corporate finance departments around the world compute it as an integral part of investment analysis. Appraisers estimate it as a step towards estimating intrinsic or discounted cash flow value. Analysts spend disproportionate amounts of their time working on it, though not always for the right reasons or with the right inputs.”
Lee Drucker
We recently sat down with above the law to discuss how we found our selves in the legal claim finance business and answer some questions about the industry:
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/a-conversation-with-the-founders-of-lake-whillans-litigation-finance/
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Venture capitalists invest in early stage growth companies, typically in high technology industries, such as biotechnology, energy, or IT. While many of these investments go on to become Tesla, Amazon, or the next life-saving pharmaceutical, about 65% of venture financings return 0-1x. Many of these investments fail simply by virtue of the high-risk nature of…
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Lake Whillans was recently featured in an article in Crain’s New York on the role of litigation finance in helping small and mid-size companies to receive justice when victimized by larger companies. Link to the article after the jump.
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In our last post we discussed the analysis a CFO might undertake when considering whether to raise capital for a litigation. We touched upon the fact that many companies do not have a portfolio of litigation – a fact which makes it difficult to mitigate the risk of investing in a legal claim. Today, we will focus on that insight and dive more deeply into idiosyncratic risk and the value of diversification.
Generally speaking, an investor must be compensated for the time value of money and risk. The risk that an investor must be compensated for is the risk that the return on an asset will be lower than the expected return. While any investment in a litigation has substantial risk, the vast majority of that risk is what would be termed in modern portfolio theory as “idiosyncratic risk.” Idiosyncratic risk is asset-specific risk that has little or no correlation with the market. This risk can therefore be substantially mitigated or eliminated through adequate diversification. By contrast, “systematic risk” (in modern portfolio theory parlance) is risk that is inherent to the entire market or an entire market segment, and cannot be mitigated through diversification. To illustrate the difference between these two types of risk, idiosyncratic risk manifests if a company suffers a major factory closure due to a natural disaster (in which case the price of its stock will likely decline while the rest of the market remains unaffected) while systematic risk manifests if the global economy slows down (in which case the price of a company’s stock will likely decline, but so will the price of the larger market).
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The emergence of litigation finance has enabled CFOs to better manage and finance a once dormant asset – potential litigations. Many of the companies that we finance are emerging businesses with promising new products that have the ability to transform an industry. Businesses such as these are often characterized by a high ROI (return on investment) and a constrained budget (often having recently raised capital from the venture community). Imagine that the wrongful conduct of a third party has damaged such a business, and the company now faces the prospect of an expensive and lengthy litigation if it is to secure compensation. Before litigation finance, the decision might well have been between bringing litigation or not – now the decision is between self-financing or third party financing.
In order to determine which option is preferable, the CFO would likely attempt to value the potential litigation. In an older post (which you can find here), we discussed the framework for valuing a litigation. For the sake of simplicity let us assume that the expected damages are $30 million, and the chances of losing the case are estimated to be 30% – therefore the estimated value is $21,000,000.
Next, the CFO would likely attempt to calculate the cost of monetizing the asset. In order to estimate the true cost of allocating capital to the litigation, a CFO might undertake the following analysis:
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While the adoption of commercial litigation finance is on the rise, the particulars of the practice are still not widely understood. How are litigation finance deals structured? How do lawyers and clients work with funders without jeopardizing the attorney-client relationship? How are litigation-related assets valued? How relevant are champerty issues?
We at Lake Whillans Litigation Finance will be addressing these and other questions; discuss topics of interest around commercial litigation finance; and spark an informative dialogue. We will kick things off by shedding some light on a few frequently asked questions about the structure of litigation finance deals.
Q. Who are the parties to a transaction?
Generally, litigation finance companies transact directly with the claimholder. While the claimholder’s counsel is typically involved throughout the investment process—helping to answer due diligence questions and providing a case budget, for example—the investment contract is structured as a bilateral agreement directly with the claimholder. The attorney-client relationship remains exclusive to the claimholder and its attorney.
Q. Can litigation finance provide capital for activities other than litigation?
Read MoreThe best way for companies and their counsel to determine if litigation finance is an attractive option is to discuss it with us.
Lee Drucker drucker@lakewhillans.com
