A promising punt for the adventurous

While no doubt a risky investment, litigation funding is a growth market, says Tim Bennett. Here, he tips two funds to buy for the brave.

The phrase "litigation funding" conjures up images of ambulance-chasing lawyers pursuing mass personal injury claims. But that's perhaps a little unfair. As David Stevenson notes in the Financial Times, this is "a viable alternative asset class for the adventurous investor" although we'd emphasise the adventurous'.

Litigation funding is basically all about funding another person's legal fees in return for a cut of the amount recovered. This enables litigants (who can be individuals, but are often small-to-medium-sized businesses) who might have been otherwise unable to afford to bring a case to do so.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.