Jonathan Barnes is Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at Woodsford Group Limited. Before leaving private practice, Jonathan enjoyed a successful 20-year career in the City of London as a transactional lawyer. In 2006 he joined longstanding client Woodsford Consulting – a business consultancy and Family Office of a wealthy European family – as a director and subsequently CEO. Jonathan co-founded Woodsford Litigation Funding in 2010 and has been central to its successful growth. Woodsford is a founder member of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales and Jonathan serves on its Board.
+44 20 7313 8079
jbarnes@woodsford.com
Erik Bomans is the CEO of Deminor Recovery Services, a global litigation funder with offices in Brussels, Luxembourg, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Hong Kong. Erik joined Deminor in 1995 and became a partner in 2000. He founded Deminor Recovery Services, a company that was spun off from the Deminor Group in 2013. Erik has been a speaker at several conferences on investor protection, corporate governance and litigation finance and contributed to various publications on these subjects. He is regularly invited by the European press to comment on these topics. Prior to joining Deminor, Erik practiced as a lawyer at the corporate law department of De Bandt, Van Hecke & Lagae (subsequently merged with Linklaters) in Brussels and was admitted to the Brussels bar in 1996. Erik has a law degree from the University of Leuven (Belgium) where he graduated in 1991. In 1993 he graduated from the Johns Hopkins University (Washington, D.C.) as a Master of Arts in international politics and economics. In 1997-1999 he pursued a two-year executive program in financial analysis organized by the Belgian Association of Financial Analysts (ABAF) and subsequently obtained the diploma of certified international investment analyst (CIIA) which is accepted by UK FSA as a valid certification within the London financial environment as well as outside Europe (South America, Africa and Asia).
Susan Dunn is co-founder of Harbour Litigation Funding and is one of the most experienced and well-known professionals in the funding sector. A pioneer of litigation funding in the UK, Susan has been sourcing and investing for over 15 years’ and during this time has provided significant input to the development of public policy. Susan was a founding member of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales, and continues to play an important role with this body. Susan has previously worked as a litigator in the UK and the US where she was also a diplomat (Vice-Consul Investment), for the British Government.
+44020 3829 9320
susan.dunn@harbourlf.com
William Farrell is Managing Director and General Counsel at Longford Capital, which he co-founded in 2011. He is an accomplished attorney with more than 20 years of complex litigation experience, including extensive trial and appellate experience in the United States as both a government prosecutor and as a partner in the commercial litigation departments of two prominent national law firms. William serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Baylor Law School teaching a course on litigation finance.
+1 312 212 8240
wfarrell@longfordcapital.com
Ian Garrard is Managing Director and a director of Innsworth Advisors, based in London. Innsworth sources, evaluates and manages investments in litigation and arbitration. Prior to Innsworth Ian has had over 25 years’ experience, in private legal practice (having founded two successful law firms) and in senior executive roles, of managing large scale disputes across many jurisdictions. Ian is recognized by various publications as a leader in litigation funding.
igarrard@innsworth.com
David Icikson is Chief Operating Officer and Head of Investor Relations for Parabellum Capital. He joined Parabellum Capital in 2014 and has responsibility for the firm’s investor relations and capital formation, compliance, technology, and human resources functions. He is also a member of Parabellum Capital’s Investment Committee. David joined the firm after spending fourteen years at Goldman Sachs where he served in several roles, including COO for Fixed Income North Americas Sales, Chief of Staff for Global Recruiting, and global head of Goldman Sachs University for the Securities Division. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, David served as Deputy Executive Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he was a member of the Chief of Staff’s office for Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Sarah Johnson serves as head of the Litigation Investing team within the D. E. Shaw group’s Private Credit investment unit. The Litigation Investing team provides financing solutions to law firms, plaintiffs, and other parties involved in commercial litigation. Ms. Johnson joined the D. E. Shaw group in 2006 as an analyst primarily working on distressed credit-related investments, including restructurings, opportunities in stressed equities, litigation plays (including monetizing litigation assets), and bankruptcy liquidations. She has led the Litigation Investing team since its formation in 2018. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Johnson was an associate in the restructuring and finance group of the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. She began her career as an investment banking analyst at Salomon Smith Barney Inc. Ms. Johnson graduated cum laude from Duke University with a B.A. in economics and received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a managing editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and James Kent Scholar
Sarah.Johnson@deshaw.com
Paul Kong is the executive director and ex officio board member of the International Legal Finance Association (ILFA), where he leads the industry association for global commercial litigation finance. Previous to ILFA, Paul worked as director for the International Division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and served as a senior aide to two U.S. Senators.
pkong@ilfa.com
William C. Marra is a Director at Certum Group, a litigation finance and litigation insurance company. He is also a Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he teaches a course on litigation finance. His academic articles on funding have been published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, Southern California Law Review, and Theoretical Inquiries in Law. He previously clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Earlier in his career, he practiced constitutional and commercial litigation at Cooper & Kirk PLLC in Washington, D.C. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Hassan Murphy is a founder and co-managing partner of TRGP Investment Partners LP and is responsible for overall corporate management and oversight, deal sourcing, investment selection, portfolio construction, and commercial litigation initiatives. Hassan is also a member of TRGP’s Board of Directors, the Board ofHuman Rights First and the Board of Visitors of the University of MarylandSchool of Law. Formerly, Hassan was a nationally recognized trial lawyer in tort, products, consumer class actions, environmental, civil rights, data breach and complex commercial litigation, leading the firm he managed – Murphy,Falcon & Murphy – to over $1 Billion in verdicts and settlements. Results included the then largest punitive damages verdict and the largest private groundwater contamination settlement inMaryland history and the largest police shooting settlement in the UnitedStates. Hassan has been appointed lead counsel and/or to the plaintiffs’ steering committee in multiple class actions across the country.
As defense counsel to Fortune 500’s in bet-the-company litigation in venues across the country, Hassan worked with C-suite leadership to mitigate risk and significantly reduce payouts.
He has been named National Trial Lawyer of theYear by Lawyers for Public Justice and to the Top 100 Black Lawyers in America. He holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Georgetown University.
David Perla is Vice Chair and a member of the Management Committee. In his role at Burford, Mr. Perla is responsible for marketing, public policy, industry affairs and public relations. An entrepreneur and legal industry leader with expertise in building high-growth legal and technology-driven businesses, he was named a Top 50 Innovator of the Last 50 Years by The American Lawyer. Prior to joining Burford, Mr. Perla served as President of Bloomberg BNA Legal Division/Bloomberg Law, where he oversaw Bloomberg BNA’s legal and related products, including its flagship Bloomberg Law enterprise legal news, information and tools platform. Previously, Mr. Perla co-founded and was co-Chief Executive Officer and a director of Pangea3, the top-ranked global legal process outsourcing provider. Pangea3 was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2010 and grew to over 1,000 employees globally under Mr. Perla's leadership. Before launching Pangea3, he was Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs for Monster.com. Mr. Perla began his career in the New York office of Katten Muchin.
Neil co-founded Therium in 2008 and is the firm’s Chief Investment Officer. A solicitor with over 22 years’ experience, he was previously Litigation Counsel in-house for Marsh & MacLennan Companies, Inc. (MMC), prior to which he was in practice in the City of London with US firm Reed Smith and Withers. Neil has led investments in litigation and arbitration valued in excess of $15 billion, including many of the largest and most high-profile funded cases in the market. He is also a founding board member of the Association of Litigation Funders, the self-regulatory body for the industry in England and Wales and is regularly invited to speak at conferences and quoted in the media on issues related to the industry. Since it was first published in 2018, Neil has been consistently recognised as a leading individual in the litigation funding industry by Chambers and Partners. He gained an MA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford in 1995.
+44 20 3327 3460
neil.purslow@therium.com
Robert Rothkopf is the Managing Partner and founder of Balance Legal Capital LLP, an independent litigation fund manager based in London and Sydney that invests in commercial litigation and class actions in the UK, Australia and other common law jurisdictions outside of the USA. Founded in 2015, Balance Legal Capital only invests in cases with merit, facilitating access to justice and making a positive impact in the world.Prior to founding Balance, Robert was a litigator in the international dispute resolution group at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP where he advised multi-national companies on commercial and investment disputes, worked in-house at BP’s specialist global dispute resolution team, and helped launch the Herbert Smith Freehills New York office. Robert has a law degree from BPP London, and a Masters of Biochemistry from Oxford University. Robert is also a Director of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales (ALF).
Michael Rozen is a Founder and co-Managing Partner of TRGP Investment Partners LP, and is responsible for overall corporate management and oversight, deal sourcing, investment selection, portfolio construction, and commercial litigation initiatives. Michael is also a member of TRGP’s Board of Directors, co-Chair of the Board of Human Rights First and member of the Board, New York State Urban Development Corporation. From November 2016 until early 2021 Michael was the Chair of the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
Prior to forming TRGP in 2015, Michael was a partner in the renowned boutique law firm Feinberg Rozen, LLP where he was nationally recognized as a leading strategist and negotiator of complex, multi-party disputes. Among many engagements throughout his lengthy legal career, Michael was Deputy Special Master of the United States government’s 09/11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, Deputy Administrator of BP’s Gulf Coast Compensation Fund and outside resolution counsel for Penn State University during the Sandusky sexual assault scandal.
+1 212 527 9506
mrozen@trgpcap.com
Raymond van Hulst, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Omni Bridgeway, is an industry veteran with more than 20 years’ experience structuring innovative solutions for complex and high value dispute funding and legal enforcement matters globally.
Mr van Hulst has established three institutionally backed funds aimed at funding legal disputes and enforcement matters. He established continental Europe’s first litigation fund, with EUR 150 million (Omni Bridgeway’s Fund 6). He subsequently established a world-first US$100 million litigation fund and joint venture with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank for the Distressed Asset Recovery Program focused on litigation funding and enforcement for non-performing loans in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Mr. van Hulst has also managed the structuring of the innovative insurance wrapped Fund 8, which Omni Bridgeway launched in 2023.
Mr van Hulst has been in various leadership roles within Omni Bridgeway since 2002, involved in all aspects of the business. He played a significant role in both the 2019 merger with IMF Bentham Limited and the 2017 acquisition of German funder Roland ProzessFinanz resulting in Omni Bridgeway’s position as the world’s leading provider of legal finance.
Prior to Omni Bridgeway, Mr van Hulst was a structured finance specialist with ABN AMRO Bank. He worked in the bank’s structured finance unit in New Delhi, India, and was part of the Capital Structuring & Advisory team in Amsterdam. He also previously worked for a private equity and venture capital backed financial services / fintech start-up.
Mr van Hulst holds an MBA from INSEAD in France and a Master’s in Management from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has lived, studied and worked in the Netherlands, India, France and Switzerland and speaks / understands Dutch, English, German and French.
+41 22 818 6301
rvanhulst@omnibridgeway.com
Marcel Wegmüller is the co-founder and CEO of Nivalion, where he leads overall firm management as well as Client Solutions & Investor Relations. Recognized by Who’s Who Legal as a “Thought Leader in Third-Party Funding” and by Lawdragon as an outstanding litigation funder, Wegmüller brings more than a decade of international disputes funding experience. Prior to Nivalion, he held senior management roles at Credit Suisse and led Switzerland’s first litigation funding business. He holds a master’s degree in law from the University of Zurich, is admitted to the Swiss bar, and has completed executive programs at INSEAD and London Business School.
Kacey Wolmer is the Chief Operating Officer at Contingency Capital.
Kacey was formerly Senior Vice President and Counsel at FirstKey Mortgage, LLC, a wholly owned portfolio company of funds and accounts managed by Cerberus Capital Management.
Prior to FirstKey, Kacey was an associate at both Hunton & Williams LLP (now Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP) and Thacher Proffitt & Wood in their respective structured finance and securitization practice groups, and an Associate at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in the private funds group.
Kacey was also previously an Associate & Counsel at Fortress Investment Group.
Kacey received a JD from University of Michigan Law School and a BA from Emory University.