Litigation funder Burford Capital has hired in-house UBS lawyer Mark Klein as its new general counsel in New York.
Klein began his career in private practice at Weil Gotshal & Manges, where he worked on public and private mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity capital markets and securities law.
He has been an in-house legal expert in the financial services sector for a number of years, working at UBS where he held titles such as managing director and GC of infrastructure and private equity.
Most recently, he was GC and chief compliance officer at Marketfield Asset Management, a large US registered investment adviser. He will take up his new post at Burford immediately.
Burford’s CEO Christopher Bogart said: “Mark is a great fit for our culture and adds a wealth of experience that will be highly relevant as Burford continues to grow as a business and to develop new solutions for our clients.”
In July, Burford and Shepherd & Wedderburn sealed the first ever litigation finance arrangement in the first of its kind between a top UK 100 law firm and a major funder.
As part of the deal, Burford will offer alternative fee arrangements to clients and to grow its commercial and litigation and arbitration offerings.
Earlier that month, Burford recorded its best ever results, with profit in the first half of 2017 surpassing that achieved in the whole of 2016.
Income increased by 130 per cent to $175.5m (£130m), driven by a 148 per cent in investment income to $161.6m, compared with $65.3m in the first half of the previous year.
In eight years, Burford has gone from an £80m startup to having a market cap in excess of $2bn, in an ample illustration of how much ground funders have gained in the litigation market.
