For the World’s Super Rich, Litigation Funding Is the New Black

When shares of AMP Ltd. plunged earlier this year after the firm was engulfed in a fee-for-no-service scandal, the Australian wealth manager was hit within weeks by the first of five separate class action lawsuits.

It wasn’t just the seriousness of the situation -- which included an admission that AMP repeatedly misled regulators and charged clients for services they didn’t receive -- that prompted the attention of so many law firms. The multiple suits were all supported by external funding bodies, whose coffers have been swelled by a flood of money moving into litigation financing in Australia and elsewhere. ...