Hello, this is Rob Bailhache, and I'm Head of Investor Relations, EMEA and Asia at Burford Capital. I and Jim Ballan, who heads IR in the Americas, would like to welcome you on behalf of the entire Burford team to today's 2022 CEO event for our worldwide retail shareholders. We're delighted to have you join our audio webcast, and we hope you find this forum useful. Yes again, we've had a strong level of response, both in terms of numbers of participants and questions. So thank you in advance for your interest. Before we start with my handing over to Chris Bogart, I want to cover some housekeeping. After Chris provides some opening remarks, we'll move straight to Q&A. You can ask a question at any time during the audio webcast by typing it into the Q&A box you can see on your screen.
This is discreet to you personally and to us. If you have any technical questions for our production team in our virtual green room, you can also use the same private Q&A box for that purpose. We'll endeavor to get through as many questions as possible, but due to the high volume of queries we've received, Chris won't be able to respond to them all during the time that we have. We've taken the questions we've received in advance and grouped them by topic. While we may not pose each of your queries, we will attempt to address every subject that's been raised. If there are new subjects from the live Q&A feed, we will try to get to those too. Worth mentioning as well that we can't take questions that seek an update on our business beyond what we've obviously already made public.
Finally, a replay will be available to registrants a short while after today's event using the link you've already been provided with. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Chris Bogart, Burford's Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you very much, Rob. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I really do enjoy doing this every year. It's become an important part of our IR calendar, and it's really gratifying to us to see so very many people participating and submitting questions. In fact, we've got such a volume of questions this year that I am in fact not going to do a sort of a potted overlay. You know, what I would have been covering would basically have been a shorter version of what we did on the earnings call.
Since it's clear from the questions that many of you are very familiar with the business and no doubt watched that earnings call or listened to it, I'm not gonna retread that ground. The earnings slides and the earnings call are available on our website if you're not familiar with them, and so I'd encourage you to go and rewatch them there. But instead, we're gonna go straight into Q&A so that we maximize the time that we have together. And I think that the questions will actually cover a broad range of what's going on in the business today anyway. So thank you again for your thoughtful questions and for your participation.
Thank you, Chris. Comes from Martin Devine. In your capital markets day, you presented encouraging information on the accuracy of your investment outcome modeling. In light of this positive modeling predictability, have you any thoughts on significantly upscaling your investment through more capital raising or other means?
Well, I think what you've seen, first of all, from us in the recent past is quite a lot of capital raising, actually. In the last three months, we've raised more than $1 billion of new capital between a debt issuance that we raised very successfully in late March, early April. We've actually closed two new investment funds. We've closed the Advantage Fund, which is our first foray into, you know, what we think of as the 12%-20% IRR range for the business. We've closed the second base fund just very recently, as well as extending the life of our sovereign wealth fund arrangement.
So I think the short answer is that we are enthusiastic about the growth prospects for the business, and we have laid the capital base, to take advantage of those growth prospects.
Thanks, Chris. The next one comes from Colin McPhee. Over the last 12 months or so, you've raised $760 million in debt finance, although some debt has been repaid. The need for capital is partly explained by COVID-related delays in court activity, reducing case realizations. Yet the weighted average life of concluded cases has remained fairly stable. The inference is that continuing expansion of deployments is the primary driver of the need for capital. Absent a significant and early cash injection from the YPF cases, Burford faces a choice between raising more finance or restricting new business. Please comment.
Well, I think that's an accurate statement of the choice that any growing investment business faces. So you know, whether it's Burford or whether it's a more traditional private equity business, you know, the simple fact of the matter is that, if you're going to continue to grow the business with medium or long-dated assets, that growth requires the application of additional capital. You know, I think this is most obvious in the private equity world. If you look at the Blackstone and the KKR and the Brookfield and the Partners Group and so on. You know, the way that they create growth, the way that they manage the growth levels of their business is by regularly raising new and ever larger funds.
That's simply the nature of the capital progression. What you see with us is because our assets are so much shorter dated, as the question points out, we have a little bit more flex than if we were dealing with sort of, you know, five to 10-year duration private equity assets. You see us take advantage of that flex by having a more nimble capital structure and also being able to retain more of our profits on the balance sheet. So that's how we think about those issues. And to the point about duration, you know, it's accurate that the duration of our concluded cases has remained relatively constant.
That being said, you know, we've obviously seen some COVID-related delays in the portfolio, and so it's not an unreasonable assumption to think that those weighted average lives will increase as the cases that are presently underway do in fact conclude. That doesn't really change the dynamic around the fact that, you know, capital investment businesses are capital consumers as they grow by definition. And I think we, as I said in answer to the previous question, I think we've laid the foundation for having robust capital availability. You know, some years ago, this business was capital constrained. And today we certainly don't feel capital constrained. We have a wide range of access to capital in various pools and places.
Our next question comes from Michael Maben. Please comment on our seeming to be stuck in a bit of a COVID rut in terms of delay, which has held up settlements, cash collection, reportable profits and favorable analyst ratings. And relatedly, a question, I suppose, from Martin Devine, who asks the global pandemic caused significant delays in the courts, impacting Burford's pending case portfolio. What's the current status in the courts versus six months ago?
Sure. When you think about COVID delay, which clearly we've been subject to, first of all, there are a couple of pieces of relative good news for our business compared to lots of COVID-affected businesses. One of them is that all we are facing are delays. You know, we're not a restaurant or a hotel or an airline where if you don't do the business today, you're not gonna catch up that business tomorrow, you'll lose that business forever. Whereas our cases are still all sitting there. We haven't had a single case discontinue because of COVID-related delays. They're simply taking longer to get to completion. In many instances, we actually are compensated for that delay with our time-based returns.
And so, at the end of the day, it's not necessarily that COVID will have been a net bad thing. It might actually be a net good thing. Although, obviously, one would prefer a world in which things were resolving more rapidly, notwithstanding the fact that we may make more money on that at the end of the day. So when you look at what COVID delay actually means for us, COVID delay really falls into two different categories. The first category is delay that relates to the progress of litigation and arbitration matters through the pre-hearing or the pretrial process. So if you commence a piece of litigation today against somebody else, you don't go immediately into the court process. You spend a bunch of time in advance doing pretrial things.
You exchange documents, you take witness testimony, you retain and prepare expert witnesses and so on. And that is something that the court is only lightly involved in, and therefore it's not affected so much by court scheduling. But the reality is, in 2020 and 2021, you know, people were saying, sometimes quite rightly and sometimes tactically, that COVID was interfering with their ability to do those things, that they couldn't go to their offices and therefore they couldn't produce their documents. They couldn't travel, and therefore they couldn't be deposed, things like that. And you know, judges were, you know, understandably, during the midst of the pandemic, not willing to really hold people's feet to the fire and force them into rapid compliance. I think that part of the delay game has really abated.
You know, today we're not seeing judges being sympathetic to COVID-related arguments, except in very unusual cases. If you were to show up today in front of a judge and say, "Oh, Judge, you know, COVID, I'm still worried about COVID, I can't produce my documents," you're really not gonna get any sympathy for that argument any longer. Those delays have abated. The second flavor of delay is when it comes to the courts themselves. And so obviously what we saw was a meaningful reduction in court activity during the height of the pandemic. That's especially true with respect to cases that need jury trials. Juries simply were not sitting very much at all in the pandemic. And there are some tactical litigation questions here as well.
Not only just mechanical court delays, it's also, you know, a tactical question about in a case, you know, if the jury pool is only composed of those people who are willing to show up, and if everybody in the courtroom is gonna be masked, and when you're cross-examining a witness, that witness is gonna be masked, you know, you have to ask yourself whether you do want to go forward with the trial at that moment or whether you want to wait things out a little bit. So what we have now is, you know, virtually all courts are back in operation, but they face meaningful backlogs in their dockets. Most courts are gonna prefer criminal cases to civil cases first in clearing that backlog.
While we are seeing things move, and having things move, of course, is also the catalyst in many cases for things to settle. There's still some time to go in that process, but I'm optimistic that it will continue to resume. You know, it will continue to come back to normal, as the future unfolds.
Thanks. Our next question comes from Sean Jahan. Actually it's a bit more of a statement than a request. One of the main areas of opacity is knowing the state of Burford's case progress through the courts. Could a simple stage gate column be added to the detailed portfolio spreadsheet that you disclose on your website? For instance, noting whether a matter is in fact-finding jury deliberation delayed by X weeks due to the relevant factor and so on. Please comment.
Yeah. It's an interesting question. And I did sort of reflect on it a little bit, about, you know, number one, could we do that without running the risk of identifying the underlying cases, which of course is something our clients don't want to do. Because if I were to give you know, if I were to say to you, "Okay, we've got a large, you know, U.S. antitrust case and it's going into jury selection this week," you know, there may well only be one such case in the country that fits that bill, and that is going to effectively out the presence of Burford in the case, which is something our clients are not looking to do. We'd have to contend with that issue.
I think the larger issue is the question of the helpfulness of that information, because every case and every court is different. And if I were to merely tell you that a case was at a certain stage, that wouldn't necessarily let you draw any conclusions about its likely future duration. You know, if you have a contract case pending in federal court in the Northern District of Virginia, which operates what they call a rocket docket, which tries to get cases from the beginning to the end of their life in a matter of months, being told that you're in depositions in that court probably means you would be looking for a trial date in six months if you didn't have COVID delays.
A case in the Northern District of California, or the Eastern District of Pennsylvania at the same stage, would mean two or more years before a trial date. And so the level of specificity I think that you would have to have for that information to be meaningful would be difficult for us to convey and also would probably not meet with our clients' approval, but it's something that we'll give a little bit of thought to.
Great. Next question comes from Paul De Gruchy, and this is a very timely question. Could you say a few words about how a higher inflation environment affects Burford's business? And relatedly, from Simon Shi. How does the current rising rates environment influence Burford's future earnings and litigation assets?
So it's an excellent question. At the moment the answer is not very much. All of Burford's debt is long-term fixed rate debt. And so our access to capital and the pricing of that capital is not affected by rising interest rates. You know, obviously, if we were to go to the market again today, we would presumably have to pay a little bit more for our debt than we did the last time we issued, although we have also been enjoying an improvement in our credit quality. And so if you look at the price of our debt between the beginning of 2020 and the beginning.
Sorry, the beginning of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 when we issued, the nominal interest rate that we paid did go up, but it went up considerably less than the index had gone up. We actually saw effectively an improvement in our relative cost of funds. Now, obviously, if interest rates go up by several more percent for the next time we come to do a debt issuance, the question then is going to be our ability to pass on that increased interest expense to our counterparties. Now, I think the good news is that we haven't tested that obviously because we haven't been in an inflationary environment.
I think the good news is that we're talking about even though we're seeing rising rates, we're talking about relatively modest increases in interest rates compared to Burford's overall historical returns. And so it's not something that I worry about as much as I would if we were running a very tight sort of consumer mortgage business where the business is gonna be highly sensitive to really even quite small changes in rates. The other thing that I would note is that in litigation, you come with a little bit of a hedge because the at least the post-judgment interest rates applied by most courts to judgments are actually tied to market interest rates. As we've seen increases in the.
As we've seen increases in interest rates, we've also seen increases in post-judgment rates. You know, for example, it was reported in the press that we had a small victory yesterday. And there, in a world where only a year or so ago, I think the running interest would have been computed in basis points, there we were successful in getting, you know, a 5% interest award. We do have a hedge on the other side of the dynamic as well.
Our next question is on cash realizations, and it comes from Michael Maidment. He says, "I'm expecting some cash receipts, at least from the Steinhoff matter, which I understood was settled in the March quarter. Additional cash realizations would be most welcome to boost the profit trend and finance further growth. Please comment.
Well, I'm not sure I have much to say there except that I agree. You know, we are all about turning these matters into cash. I'd point out that that has continued to happen even with the significant delays from the pandemic. You know, it's not as though we didn't generate a robust amount of cash last year, you know, vastly more than we needed to cover, you know, our debt obligations and our operating expenses, for example. But I certainly agree with Michael that you know, yet more would be even nicer. And that's certainly something that we address ourselves to. That being said, you know, one of the reasons this business is attractive is because its cash flows are uncorrelated because they come purely out of judicial activity.
And we are not even a secondary party to that judicial activity, we're at most a tertiary party, and our ability to influence it is effectively zero. So other than simply waiting and watching and making good investment decisions and helping the cases along, then we're in the hands of the system to deliver those cash returns.
We have a number of questions to Chris on YPF, so let me turn to some of those. First from Clifford Brown. Has there been any ruling on the motions for summary judgment in the Petersen and Eton Park cases? And from Daniel Goldbloom, wh o asks, how long would it be before we can expect for the judge to reach resolution on summary judgment for the YPF case?
Let me explain what's happening here as a matter of this court's process and procedure. So there are really no material facts in dispute in the YPF case. You know, if you have a very simple piece of litigation, you know, a car crash where, you know, I drove into your car at an intersection, and I claim you ran a red light and you claim I was speeding, that's a genuine dispute of material fact. And the only way that our system resolves those disputes is by taking those kinds of factual disputes to trial.
Here we don't have any of those factual disputes, and so there is available a process called summary judgment, which means that the judge will look at the case and consider whether to resolve it without having to hold a trial. And so the parties have been briefing summary judgments, so filing legal memoranda and a variety of supporting materials about the case. That's a process that has been going on since March, and it will end next week. So a week from today, I think it is, the case will be fully briefed and submitted to the judge. These are long, complex filings. They run to, you know, several thousand pages. The judge then has complete discretion about what to do next.
The judge could sit down and write an opinion, write a judgment on those papers without hearing again from the parties or doing anything else. The judge could decide to hold oral argument, where she invites the parties to come in addition to these written submissions, and make oral submissions, but she's not required to do that, although I think there is a general sense that in a case of this size, it's likely that she would have oral argument. That oral argument could happen relatively quickly if she wanted the parties to sort of take her through the papers before she spent a lot of time on the case. Or she could elect to spend a bunch of time on the case first and then schedule oral argument later after she has spent that time and read herself into the papers.
She could dispose of the entire case through summary judgment, or she could dispose of some or none of it and send all of it or some portion of it to trial. So those are all things that are within her discretion. And there's no way at the moment to speculate about which of those courses is more likely, except to say that, you know, unlike my car accident example, it's not impossible, in our view, for her to deal with the case entirely in summary judgment. So there's nothing here that, in our view, mandates a trial. So that's sort of where we sit. This is a judge who has historically been quite efficient, so it's not that one would expect this to be a multi-year process or anything like that.
If she does hold oral argument, that oral argument might give us some further clarity about how she is thinking about progressing the case. But just like, you know, just like any other judge, whether it's in the U.S. or the U.K., you know, there's a wide degree of personal liberty and discretion given to individual judges, and they are responsible for their own dockets instead of there being a rule that says, "Okay, you know, within 60 days or within 90 days, you must do such and so." So that's where we stand with the case. But the good news is that whatever happens here, there's no question that the case has entered what I'd think of as its end phase in the trial courts after all these many years.
Still on YPF, there's a question here, Chris, from Bruce Hamilton, following up on that response, who asks what sort of issues might become apparent during summary judgments, oral arguments that would lead the judge to conclude that these can only be resolved by trial?
I think it's really a question of whether she would like to hear witnesses and cross-examination about something. Let me make an important point about this. There is no jury here. So what is happening in summary judgment in many instances is the parties are trying to get the judge to decide something to avoid the case going to a jury. Whereas that's not the case here at all. This is a bench trial, so the judge is gonna decide this case one way or the other. There's never going to be a jury.
So it's really a question for her about, you know, if she reads the papers and let's say she thinks, "Gee, you know, there are enough complex issues in how to compute the damages," let's just use that as an example, that in addition to reading the expert reports from these eminent economic experts, I'd actually like to see them. I'd actually like them to come into my courtroom and sit in the witness box and be subject to cross-examination because I think I'll understand the issue better that way. That's the kind of thing that would happen in this case. And I think, by the way, while we're talking about this, it's worth making another point about this case in contrast to the traffic accident case. Because there aren't facts in dispute, the courts don't give.
The appellate courts are not gonna give deference here to what happens with the trial judge. So in the traffic accident case, you know, if Bruce and I were the people in the traffic accident and we both testified at trial and the judge preferred Bruce's evidence to mine and thought that he was more credible, that's not a finding that an appellate court is going to disturb on appeal. That's a finding to which a lot of deference will be given to the trial court. When it comes to a case like this, where there aren't really disputed facts, if we were to lose at trial, for example, an appeal here would be what's called de novo.
In other words, the three judges on the appellate panel would look at all of the same issues again and apply their own judgment to them. And so that's a relevant, you know, and distinction when you think about this case as well.
There's a follow-up from Bruce, still on YPF. Assuming Judge Preska rules in favor of the plaintiffs and awards substantial damages, what payment procedure do you expect the Argentine government will use to settle the debt? Will it be the same dollar-denominated Argentine sovereign bonds that we used to pay off Repsol and which they sold for cash in a matter of weeks?
I have to say, as I sit here today, we haven't reached that stage in the case, and so I don't really have an expectation. I think we'll just have to see what Judge Preska does first, and then move into the stage of dealing with how to enforce whatever her ultimate judgment is. But certainly you've seen Argentina use bonds like that in the past, but I would just be engaging in, you know, in rank speculation about what it is that they would do here.
Great. Just moving on from YPF. Question from Udi Knaani, and he asks, o ther than YPF, how many cases in Burford's portfolio have the potential to contribute more than $500 million to Burford? And how many may end up contributing more than $100 million?
So I don't have a number to give you, and that's not something that we really do on a single case basis anyway. We like to look at the overall potential of the portfolio. And you know, as many of you are aware, our portfolio modeling, and Ruska, you can see this on slide seven. Our portfolio modeling suggests the potential of the portfolio as a whole generating material gains over time. You see them, the potential there on the slides.
In terms of breaking that down into individual cases, I suppose all I could say is that the cases that would generate a $500 million profit to us as opposed to a more than a $500 million recovery in the case, those are relatively rare cases in the world of litigation. The simple reality is that, you know, to generate $500 million for us means that you're gonna have to win a trial, you know, in most cases well over $1 billion. There just aren't that many billion-dollar pieces of litigation out there in the world, although there are certainly some.
There are obviously more than if you deal with $100 million, but I don't really have a number to give you.
Okay. Moving to Colin McPhee. Debt finance is more profitable for Burford than finance raised from investment funds, therefore, that appears to be the preferred route. The net debt tangible equity ratio was 77% at end 2021. If we add the recent $360 million financing through the bond issue, the ratio is currently close to 100%. Although the recent financing was well judged in view of subsequent rising rates, instinctively I feel a 100% debt equity ratio is high enough. This is particularly so when you consider YPF unrealized gain represents 50% or so of net equity. Please comment.
Well, I think that, first of all, when you think about debt, we have always believed in using some debt, but also using it in a conservative way. And obviously one of our motivations in taking that view is the fact that the management team here owns around 10% of the business, 10% of the equity of the business. And so we're fully aware of the fact that when we sort of look up at the capital stack, we're sitting at the bottom, and it's not in the interest of us as equity holders or you as equity holders for us to over-lever the business and take on, you know, an undue amount of leverage risk. And so I agree with the thrust of the question.
You know, turning to the mechanics of it, we issued a whole series of public debt in the U.K. markets. That public debt is gonna be outstanding for a number of years yet. It's not callable. All of that debt comes with quite a restrictive leverage covenant of no more than 0.5x debt- to- equity. And so that is, and we are well within that covenant. I think we're actually below 0.2x right now, if I'm not mistaken, after the repayment of the most recent bonds. So we are well within that covenant level, and we're fully aware of the existence of that covenant level, especially as you say, given the YPF assets on the balance sheet.
So I don't think you're gonna see us moving to a highly levered business. That being the case, I do think that a moderate sensible level of leverage in the business is an appropriate thing here, especially given that we can have leverage that is much longer duration than the weighted average life of the cases.
Great. Couple of regulatory questions, Chris. First in relation to the U.S., and it comes from Francisco Pagabale. Francisco asks, we've observed that several U.S. states have abolished champerty and maintenance altogether. Others haven't abolished champerty and maintenance, but permit litigation finance, while others still prohibit the use of litigation finance. Can you provide a view on the regulatory trends in the U.S. as regards litigation finance? Specifically, rather than litigation finance prohibition, is there a risk of regulation limiting fees?
No. I think our view about the regulatory climate is that it is tilted in favor of continued accommodation of commercial litigation finance. Now I advisedly said commercial there, and where you see. You know, there's not really any regulatory activity going on that focuses on commercial litigation finance. Where you see some states focused is on the consumer side of the equation. You know, as some of you know, entirely separate and apart from what Burford does, Burford doesn't do this consumer business at all. There is a large U.S. business of making small dollar advances to consumer plaintiffs while they await resolution of their litigation matters.
And this is in some ways an almost uniquely American phenomenon because you have, of course, a largely privatized healthcare system, largely private healthcare system in the U.S. You don't have the same sort of social welfare net that you have in some other countries like the U.K. or like my native Canada.
And so if you are injured, let's say you're a construction worker and you're injured during the course of working, you may well find yourself in financial distress between your medical bills and the fact that you no longer have current income while you wait for the ultimate settlement of your claim with your insurer. And so what has grown up to meet that need is the system of what feels almost like payday lending for consumer U.S. consumers. This is a difficult policy issue for regulators in the U.S., because on the one hand, they don't like high payday lending style interest rates in these advances.
But on the other hand, if they don't have the advances available, then they have a category of people who are simply outside the social welfare net, and could go bankrupt and fall into personal insolvency. And so what you see going on is an effort to address that issue, you know, in purely the consumer space. It really doesn't roll over into the commercial space. And there's a long tradition, a long history in the U.S. of setting a level above which the government doesn't intervene in commercial transactions. Most states have such a limit. They vary sort of from $50,000-$500,000. New York's, for example, is $500,000.
And it's perfectly clear that above that level, the kind of commercial litigation activity that we do is exempt from any sort of regulation.
Still on regulation, a question from Alex Green, who asks, the European Union has been considering possible regulation around third-party litigation funding. Is this an issue of concern or an opportunity for Burford in Europe?
Well, I'm not sure that I agree with the premise. The only thing that has happened is that one European Member of Parliament or whatever they're called, you know, has put forward a position paper, but there hasn't been any sort of overall activity by the European Commission. And I don't have any current reason to believe that there's a groundswell of potential activity there. It's very interesting to watch Europe actually right now. When I say Europe here, I really am excluding the U.K. for this purpose. Because there have been a number of large and high-profile scandals that have caused widespread injury to lots of businesses and lots of consumers.
And these range from some of the anti-competitive conduct that the European Commission has identified to very obvious things like Wirecard. And so I think that that has caused, you know, a fair degree of head-scratching in Europe. You know, Wirecard's an excellent example. You know, here you've got a German business that has obviously committed a multi-billion dollar fraud. The Germany doesn't have contingency fees, so there isn't the kind of ability the way there is in some other jurisdictions like the U.S. for one to go and bring a class action against Wirecard. But if there's not some form of collective action, then it is economically inefficient, economically impossible for many injured parties to get any redress at all.
And so I think that the European courts actually are taking a fairly positive view towards the emergence of things like litigation funding. And by all reports, there was a very favorable decision just recently in the German Supreme Court in that regard. So I think that the environment actually is pro- litigation finance, at least large dollar commercial litigation finance.
Thanks. Our next question comes from Marcel Schober, and Marcel, asks, do you consider buying back stock instead of distributing cash via a dividend payment? At current levels, buybacks would be more accretive and would also be more tax efficient.
That question, you know, is an excellent question because it puts a number of those issues on the table all at the same time. I think the short answer is, while we continue to discuss and to look at, you know, every option about returning capital to shareholders and improving the share price in general, I think that we haven't decided to take any kind of precipitous action in any direction. The dividend is an fascinating question. The underlying corporate finance, you know, rationale of the question is, in my view, correct in the sense that dividends are a relatively inefficient way of returning capital to shareholders.
That being said, you know, it is clear that there is, you know, a strong affection for dividends in the U.K. equity market, to the point where, you know, I think that we would have some investors who simply would not be able to hold the stock if it didn't pay a dividend. You know, after lots of consultation with shareholders, we've arrived at our current approach to dividends, which is to pay, you know, only a moderate dividend. I think it's perfectly clear that nobody's buying Burford as a yield play. Paying only a moderate dividend, but paying a dividend that satisfies the needs and desires of U.K. investors to have that dividend sitting there. As a U.S. tax resident, I agree with the premise of the question.
It is tax inefficient for me to receive a dividend on Burford stock. But I'm mindful of the fact that we have a number of shareholder constituencies, and we need to satisfy all of them instead of just some of them. But it's certainly, you know, those questions are certainly things that the board regularly discusses.
A question from Bruce Anderson on quarterly reporting. Given the fact cases take on average between three to four years to conclude, what benefit does the board believe shareholders will get from moving to quarterly reporting? If those benefits are few or non-existent, as I believe them to be, why bother?
Well, philosophically, I am entirely in Bruce's camp, and I join in that view with people like Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon, who believe that quarterly reporting in general is an unhealthy thing for businesses. So I couldn't agree more. That being said, quarterly reporting remains the norm and the obligation in the U.S. public markets. And the simple fact of the matter is that to be a full-fledged public market participant in the U.S., you have to engage in quarterly reporting at least until somebody does away with it altogether. So this isn't an option for us. For us to, this comes in two different flavors.
First of all, for us to raise 144A debt, which we started doing in March of 2021, we had to agree to move to quarterly reporting there. We've taken on the obligation because of the debt to start reporting quarterly in the first quarter of next year, in the first quarter of 2023. Moreover, if our U.S. shareholding base crosses the 50% threshold, and we're at about 40% right now, if we cross the 50% threshold, then we also will have a separate obligation to do quarterly reporting under the U.S. securities regime. The short answer is the board isn't taking the action because it has considered the matter and believes there's an actual tangible benefit to shareholders.
It's doing so because it has to.
Great. Next question comes from John Lockwood. John asks, what message would you give to those shareholders who bought near to the peak of the share price in 2018 to 2019?
Well, I suppose the message that I would give is that, you know, you are invested in a company where pretty much the largest shareholder in the company is the management team. We are, you know, demonstrating by our, not just by our words and deeds, but also with our pocketbooks, we're demonstrating a long-term belief in the value of the business. You know, I think lots of CEOs would say this, but, you know, I believe that the business today is materially mispriced in the market. You know, when you buy Burford, you're getting, you know, you're getting four things. First of all, you're getting an existing book of business, and that slide is still up on the screen.
And it implies that existing book of business is gonna generate $2.2 billion in cash over time. That number is already larger than our market cap. So you're getting a back book of existing business that without much incremental effort from us, is gonna roll off and will produce some level of cash. Second, you're getting the largest asset management business in the industry, which separately on its back book, is modeled to produce around $400 million of incremental cash over time, and has obviously the potential to generate future earnings, as we've seen from the fact that we just raised, you know, more than $700 million of new funds in the last three months.
The third thing you're getting is an origination engine for future new litigation finance business. You know, last year that generated more than $1 billion of new business. And so that seems to me, you know, that's a business that often would have some, you know, terminal value and future growth potential associated with it. Seems to me you're getting that for nothing. And you're also getting YPF as a free option. So you know, my valuation thesis is that there's quite a lot of value in there that is not reflected in the current share price. And that's the message that I would give to those shareholders.
That none of us have left or abandoned the ship, and we're here trying to return the stock to values of that era.
Okay. Question from Martin. Martin Devine. Is the split of daily Burford share dealing between the U.K. and U.S. markets changing over time?
Yes, I think so. We've certainly, so, w e've now been, we're now a couple of years into the U.S. process, give or take. And you know, I think we've seen an increase in U.S. trading volumes. You know, you've seen, as I said earlier, a move to about the split of equity ownership today is about 40% American, 40% U.K. and Europe, and then 20% management in Middle East. That's sort of where we are today. You know, I think over time you'll continue to see liquidity looking for its home. I'm sure there will be ebbs and flows between the markets as that continues to occur.
But one of the rationales for adding the U.S. listing is just the sheer size and depth of the U.S. market, in addition to referring back to the prior question, you know, in addition to the fact that there is, in general, U.S. Stocks trade at a higher multiple than stocks do in the U.K. I think we'll continue to see evolution in that area, but you know, we're happy with what has happened thus far. I think it's important to bear in mind that what has happened since we listed in the U.S. has all happened organically, you know, in the middle of the pandemic.
We, you know, we deliberately did not issue new equity when we added the U.S. listing because of the dilutive effects on shareholders, given that we didn't like where the price was. You know, all the U.S. activity that you've seen has been just organic investor relations activity by Rob and Jim and their colleagues, you know, in the middle of a pandemic, which has made it difficult to go and travel around and see investors.
Okay. I should point out at this stage, Chris, that we're actually on our last question as we currently stand. Giving the extra time, you know, to Q&A as opposed to prepared remarks has allowed us to power through our list. This question comes. [crosstalk]
I've been a little more taciturn than I sometimes am, which is probably a good thing from everybody's perspective.
So this final question comes from Keith Fillingham. To what extent, if any, do you suppose Burford's share price is currently influenced by the rather binary bet on the outcome of the YPF cases?
Well, I think it is influenced by that. The way I think that the share price is influenced really has to do with share purchasing more than share price. What I mean by that is that, you know, when the YPF case was something that was far in the future, prospective shareholders would pay attention to it, but it didn't loom so large in their consideration of the business. And now, a week away from the completion of summary judgment briefings and being in the end stage of the case, I think it is looming much larger.
I think the reality that has created is that if you are a prospective new shareholder, it's quite difficult for you to decide to take a position in Burford today without taking a position on YPF. Because even though, as I said a few minutes ago, I think you're getting YPF effectively as a free option in the share price today. You know, the reality is that no doubt the shares will move in one direction or the other if we win or lose the case at trial. And so I do think that that's something that is present in people's minds. You know, I'm talking to you today from Austin, Texas.
I'm here for, you know, the legal world is coming back to life, and in-person gatherings are resuming, which is a very good thing from our perspective for a marketing and business development side of things. So I'm here to participate in a significant international arbitration gathering where you'll have, you know, a meaningful collection of some of the world's leading arbitrators and arbitration lawyers. While I've been in Texas, I've taken the opportunity to go and call on some existing and some prospective investors.
And the question that you're asking is very much front of mind with an investor meeting I had just yesterday, where, you know, the prospective investor had done a lot of work on the business, liked it a lot, but was very focused on the YPF cases. You know, I think it feels like it needs to come to a view about those cases, which is difficult, obviously, to do for non-lawyers and people not enmeshed in them, you know, before it could really make a full investment decision.
I do think that will be sort of clarified in the months to come as we get to a point where there's greater public awareness of what at least the trial court is likely to do here. With that, I am greatly appreciative. I am coming in slightly under time, so thank you all for such wonderful questions and, I'm pleased that I didn't blather on for too long. I really do enjoy talking to all of you and, hopefully some more of this will come back in person. In the meantime, I hope that you find this an efficient way to have a number of questions answered and to be able to have real contact with us.
We're very grateful to all of you for the extent to which you follow the company closely and continue to support us. So thank you all very much.
Chris, if I may, I'll just jump in very quickly with an advisory to all of our participants in this call, which is just that, as a reminder, a replay facility will be available shortly after this event via the same link that you've already been sent and which you used to access today's audio webcast. And as always, we encourage you to reach out to us with any follow-up questions through the usual channels, or you can email ir@burfordcapital.com. With that, I would just like to say from the IR team, thank you very much again for participating, and please enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.