Litigation funder raises £193m

The company expects debt and private funds to follow shortly

Litigation funder raises £193m

Burford Capital has raised £192.6m via a share placement.

The company has placed 10.4 million new ordinary shares, representing about 5% of its ordinary share capital prior to the placement, with existing and new institutional investors.

The offer, which was oversubscribed, is the first equity issue of the company since 2010. It also comes as Vannin Capital, another legal funder, readies to float on the London Stock Exchange later this month.

Christopher Bogart, Burford Capital chief executive, said that the company is delighted over the strong response from current and new shareholders to the “modest” expansion of the company’s equity capital.

The placement will “serve as an even stronger foundation for the debt and private funds issues that we expect to follow shortly,” he said.

“We continually review our capital structure in light of our desire to support the growth of the business to capture the opportunities before us. It remains important to us that we both optimise our capital structure and retain a conservative balance sheet. We remain excited about the opportunities we see to deploy capital in legal finance to continue to develop our business,” Bogart said.